And The Horse You Rode In On
by Firestar9mm
Summary: Falcon was very proud, and he hated being dismissed, hated being treated like a child. And yet it was that exact bullheaded, childish pride that stopped him from telling Duke the biggest reason he was always locking horns with Scarlett—quite simply, that she had been the one who'd started it.
1. Soldiers To The War Have Gone

**Author's Introduction:  
**  
I can't properly express, not if I lived to be a hundred and ten, how much I really, really appreciate the kind messages I got upon finishing _Breathless_. After crawling out of the burning wreckage of the last year of my life, it was very heartening to discover that there are still people who were as interested to see how the story ended as I was. Hearing from someone who's enjoyed a story I've told is always a huge incentive to try to tell another one, which I do only for fun and never for profit, as these characters are not mine, simply kind enough to spend time with me. I am always grateful when they do, especially when it's the start of a new story; finishing one means I am already looking to the next one, and living in fear there might not _be_ a next one, waiting for the "Can I...?" to turn into the "I CAN" that I shouted at the end of _Breathless_. In fact, that's how this one started.

Can I...?

Can I?

 _"So, can I?" Duke finished almost shyly, as though he were asking permission to leave..._

* * *

 **And The Horse You Rode In On**

 _a G.I. Joe fanfiction by Firestar9mm_

* * *

 **Chapter One: Soldiers To The War Have Gone**  
 _  
_ _Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,  
who may never return again.  
Ten million mothers' hearts must break  
For the ones who died in vain.  
Head bowed down in sorrow in her lonely years,  
I heard a mother murmur through her tears:  
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."_

 **(Al Bryan/Al Piantadosi,** _ **I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier**_ **)**

* * *

"So, can I?" Duke finished almost shyly, as though he were asking permission to leave his chores undone and go to a movie with his friends. It didn't matter how old he grew, how many successful missions he'd led, how many enemy soldiers he'd dispatched to heaven or hell, how many life-threatening situations he'd pulled himself and his comrades out of by the laces of their boots; when Conrad Hauser spoke to his mother, he reverted to being a ten-year-old boy.

The warm laugh that he remembered from years spent in a cozy kitchen haloed in the friendly yellow light of old lamps was the answer he'd wanted. " _It's yours. Actually, I should say, it's_ _—_ _"_

"Don't," Duke interrupted, his tone one of warning. "Don't, Mama. Don't jinx me."

His mother seemed to share none of his fear; she laughed once more. " _Don't be an ass,_ " she said fondly, and he had to smile at her referring to him as such. He also couldn't help but feel flattered at the hopeful note in her voice as she asked, " _When will you be coming to pick it up_?"

"I've got a three-day pass," he told her. "And I basically had to promise the general my soul to get it, so I'm afraid it'll be a quick turnaround."

" _Long enough for a home-cooked meal and a few beers at least_ ," his mother said, and for a moment, he felt sorry for how seldom he was home. As it was, he knew he was lucky he was able to talk to her at all, something that hadn't been possible before the existence of the team had unceremoniously been made public.

He was also grateful that his mother, having been married to not one but two career Army men, hadn't simply disowned him for allowing her to believe that he was dead all that time. She knew well the sacrifices made in war, and when he had attempted to discuss it with her, she had shut him down promptly once and for all: "Conrad, I thought I had lost you and it broke my heart—why would I push you away now and break it a second time?"

He'd had an easier time than Scarlett, even though her father, like Duke's mother, had been more grateful to have his baby back than angry at her deception. Her three older brothers, who had always been overprotective of her, had been a different story. When they had heard that not only was she alive, she'd lied to them and broken their hearts to throw her lot in with an elite special forces unit, they'd collectively lost it. She'd had to put up with blistering speeches about disrespect, dishonesty and rebellion, followed by pleas that she come home, practice law and teach at the dojo. When she politely deflected the pleas, they became demands; when she ignored the demands, those mutated into threats to collect her themselves, as though she were a teenager at a forbidden frat party. Duke had been very unhappy at their treating her like a child—he had an irritating suspicion that despite their love for her, a few of Scarlett's family members would feel very comfortable with her back home in Atlanta, burying her talents beneath the house she kept and the babies she bore, with no concern for what Scarlett herself actually wanted—and had told her so, but Scarlett had defended her siblings in a subdued manner that was rather unlike her.

"They're proud of me," she'd said, in the tone of one who was trying to convince herself rather than him. "Of course they are. They just...worry," she'd concluded, and had actually nodded her head, probably without even realizing it, as if that alone would drive the point home.

That fervent declaration— _they're proud of me_ —had been heartbreaking; Duke had easily read between the lines of her insistence and realized this stubborn disapproval of her choices, from her brothers if not necessarily from her father, was not new. His rather vivid imagination had presented a lonely picture of a teenage Scarlett looking in the mirror after sparring, touching gentle fingers to a new bruise or a black eye instead of making herself up for a date. As the mirror image in his mind's eye had grown older the gi had been replaced by BDUs, dress greens, the belts had turned into medals; there had been more bruises, more scars, but none more painful-looking than that matter-of-fact promise, made over and over again, to Scarlett, from Scarlett.

 _They're proud of me. Of course they are._

He had dismissed the thought when he found himself becoming too outraged at it, and had moved on to the O'Haras' more understandable complaint—their overbearing concern for her, although he'd found that mildly insulting to her as well. Worry he could understand, but to treat her like she was breakable—Scarlett didn't even let Snake Eyes get away with that. The silent commando was her dearest friend and heart's brother, and he'd weathered countless arguments about her capabilities and strength before he'd finally learned that treating her like a damsel was not the hill to die on.

Worst of all, Scarlett had _not_ been flattered by Duke's indignation on her behalf—instead she'd been hurt by his criticism of her family, and had given him the cold shoulder for a week, during which he'd missed her sorely. In the end it had been Snake Eyes who had forced her to hear Duke out, claiming that her moping about was depressing him and he was tired of beating her at cribbage. Her commando friend had been teasing her, but no one was more sensitive to her moods than he, and her distress had alarmed him enough to comment on it. And if there was an opinion she valued, it was Snake's; mask notwithstanding, the commando was straight as a die, and his love for Scarlett was true enough that it did not extend to him taking her side when he thought she was in the wrong. This gentle jab—a coded message that even he thought she was being a little unfair—had embarrassed Scarlett enough to grant Duke an audience on his eighth attempt to make up with her.

He'd wished for Flint's way with words, or even Snake Eyes' skill at charming her, but all the all-American boy had ever had was the truth, and it had been the truth that had won her heart in the first place, so he'd looked her straight in the eye and hoped it was enough.

"Shana," he'd said, "anyone who can't see how capable, smart and strong you are can't look anything but foolish to me. I've seen you do amazing things to defend your country, and I can't stand by while someone acts like that's a waste of your time or talent. If you wanted to go home—if that was what you _really_ wanted—I'd fly you there right now in a Skystriker, kiss you goodbye and beg you to wait for me to come home from the war."

A smile had played around her lips, and he'd had the relieved feeling the cold front was over, but he wasn't finished yet, and once he'd known she was really listening he'd wanted her to hear it all.

"You're my darling," he'd confessed, the first time he had ever spoken this secret endearment for her aloud, "and I hope that I'm yours—anything you wanted, I'd go mad trying to get it for you, do it for you, _be_ it for you. I just can't understand anyone who would do otherwise."

Scarlett had shaken her head, but she was smiling; when she'd opened her arms he'd gone gratefully into them. "I have everything I want," she'd promised lovingly, adding, "my darling," before drugging him with a slow open-mouthed kiss.

That had ended the argument over her family; lying contentedly in her arms much later, he'd willingly promised that should he ever have occasion to meet them, he'd shake their hands and do his level best to impress them. It had been worth it to see her grateful smile, and he'd been prepared to keep that promise.

However, Scarlett ended up meeting _his_ family first.

* * *

Lady Jaye knocked on the doorjamb of Duke's office. "You need me, Top Kick?"

Duke had been sitting at his desk, checking off a list of things he needed people to handle for him while he was on leave and who he thought best suited to take care of them. Lady Jaye's task had been number seven on the list, but he gladly jumped it to the top spot when he saw her at his door.

"Yes, Lady Jaye, if you're willing to help me out with something while I go off-base for a few days. Have a seat."

"Planning a weekend getaway?" Lady Jaye asked silkily, taking one of the chairs in front of his desk with a knowing smile on her face. "I hope it's somewhere tropical."

Duke laughed. "No such luck. Missouri isn't exactly beachfront property."

"Missouri?" Jaye snapped to attention as if Duke had told her he was flying to the moon. "Wait. You're going to see your parents?"

Duke arched a blond brow. "Is that newsworthy?"

" _Yes_ ," Jaye gushed, slapping her hands down on his desktop and making the few picture frames he kept there—something he had only recently relaxed enough to do—rattle. "I mean, _no_. I just—I hadn't known that was what you had in mind."

Blinking, Duke joked, "Well, next time I go visit my mother, I'll be sure to run it by you, Lady Jaye."

Jaye almost squealed. "Forget about me. Should I assume I'll be doing background checks this weekend in the absence of someone who normally does that sort of thing?"

The penny dropped for Duke, and he shook his head. "Sorry to disappoint you—if _not_ having to do extra work disappoints you—but it's not what you think. Just me this weekend."

"What?" Lady Jaye's expression turned instantly into that of a twitchy, sulky housecat at the mouth of the hole through which its prey had escaped. "Not disappointed about the work, Hauser. Disappointed in _you_."

Duke felt his hackles rising. "Not sure how it's any of your business to begin with, Lady Jaye. My personal life isn't a spectator sport."

"And I'm not a spectator," Jaye shot back. "I'm a goalie—so don't screw with my teammate, Hauser, or I'll cross-check you all the way into the penalty box."

Duke blinked again, his own anger dissipating as he realized that she had misunderstood him. "You think I don't want to bring her. Is that it?"

"I think you've been taking your sweet-ass time getting to it, yes." Jaye folded her arms. "And you're still sneaking the hell around like nobody knows what's going on. No one's going to care if you stop pretending you're late for something every time someone catches you smiling at Scarlett."

Duke flushed, partly because she was being insolent and partly because she was right. "You might not be aware of this, Lady Jaye, but this is still a military installation in which we perform a job. I still answer to Hawk." In reality, Hawk knew, and Duke and Scarlett knew he knew, but they still acted decorously not just out of professionalism but out of respect for his indulgence of their fraternization.

"Oh, please. Hawk knows. _Everybody_ knows," Lady Jaye declared impatiently, decorum something she and Flint had never cared too much to practice. " _Timber_ knows!"

Duke fought a smile; Timber, he reasoned, had probably known before any of them. "What's your problem?" he asked. "Where's the argument here?" A new and unsettling possibility occurred to him. "Has Scarlett said something to you?"

Jaye blanched. "No. _No_ ," she assured him, running a hand through her cropped hair irritably. "She hardly ever talks to me about you when it's not work-related."

Duke's eyes were stormy with apprehension. "Hardly?"

Jaye smirked indulgently. "...and when she does talk personally, it's a damn love letter. Relax, Captain America, you've got the job. Trust me."

Duke relaxed fractionally, marveling briefly at how he'd gradually acquiesced to the fact that everyone knew how he felt about Scarlett, and ignoring the cheeky nickname, which he would never admit pleased him. "Then why are y..."

Something _worse_ —and there were few things he considered worse than Scarlett's unhappiness—occurred to him.

"I'll kill him," Duke growled, realization dawning on him. "Does Ace have a pool? I'll _kill_ him."

Jaye's eyes widened. "No! Not that I know about, no. Will you calm down? Not even Ace is crazy enough to bet on that when he knows both you and Snake would kill him. Hell, _Scarlett_ would kill him."

"Ace is definitely crazy enough," Duke muttered darkly. "He's probably got a dead pool going on the whole damned unit."

Jaye had the grace to blush. "Well, he _did_ , but you and Snake keep coming back from the dead on the strength of a _deus ex machina_. I mean, after Scarlett recovered from that accident on the street crime detail and you flipped the middle finger at Serpentor's spear, Ace just decided we're all immortal and realized there wasn't any money in it."

Duke rarely used vulgar language, but a familiar vulgarity almost escaped him at this.

Lady Jaye's doe-brown eyes softened; when she spoke again, it was to her friend. "She may not talk to me much about you, Conrad, but she doesn't have to—it's all in her eyes. You've got the job. She's all in, and I just want to make sure she's not going to spin double zero on you."

For a moment, Duke allowed himself to see the woman in his office as his friend and not his subordinate, and relinquished a piece of information he had previously only shared with Snake Eyes. "There's no house number on this wheel, Jaye. There's something I want to give to Scarlett, an antique compass that belonged to my father. My real father," he added for emphasis. "It's in my parents' attic, in my dad's old footlocker. My mother knows I'm coming home to get it, and she knows there's someone I want to give it to, but that's all. As far as my parents know, there's never been anyone special for me. I'm going to tell them this weekend—that's why I'm going home." Jaye's face had lit slowly through this speech like the sun rising over a ridge, and Duke was not sorry he had confessed this to her. "I'm all in, too. Till the end of the line."

"Good." Lady Jaye graced him with a sweet, relieved smile and she offered him her hand. "I'm fond of you, Conrad. I would have hated to kill you."

"If I ever hurt her, I'll let you," Duke said seriously, and they shook on it. "I'll deserve no less."

Jaye flushed prettily hearing this simple, clear declaration of feeling—it wasn't Flint's overblown poetry, but the quiet passion in it could not be denied—then frowned, remembering the original purpose of her visit. "But if taking over for Scarlett for the weekend isn't necessary, why do you need my help?"

"Oh." Duke sighed, as if he did not expect her to appreciate the task he was about to ask of her. "I need you to be sort of a...watchdog."

Jaye's eyes darkened with trepidation. "Watch for what exactly?"

"Falcon," Duke said. "Everyone's been ranking him to the dogs and back. He's never going to say out loud that he's had enough—he's way too proud—but this has gone beyond the usual hazing. Can't you get a few of them to lay off?"

Jaye blanched, her sweetly rounded cheek puffing slightly in annoyance at the thought of going to bat for Falcon. "I can't say I don't agree that it's gone far enough, but I've got to be straight with you, Duke. The kid's not winning any popularity contests around here."

Unable to defend his brother even though he wanted to, Duke nodded in defeat. "I know. I've tried talking to him, but he's got a chip on his shoulder the size of the Flagg. He's used to being the biggest personality in the room, but he's way out of his depth here, and he doesn't seem to realize bravado isn't going to impress people who've been through what this team has. He's...you know, he's young."

Jaye nodded, giving him a compassionate look. "I think he might be a little jealous."

Duke blinked innocently, the hometown boy humility that was equally endearing and maddening about him clear in his eyes. "Of _me_?"

" _Of_ you, probably," Jaye agreed affectionately, "but _over_ you, definitely."

Duke looked puzzled. "How do you mean?"

"I mean it's pretty obvious he's not wild about having to share you," Jaye said with a wry smile. "Not with us, and definitely not with Scarlett."

Duke's eyes darkened sadly. "Well, she's not crazy about him, either."

"And you know why," Jaye pointed out, "and I don't blame her one bit. Duke...you know what you mean to this team. We may not be your family—"

Duke interrupted by closing his hand over hers where it lay on the desk. "You're family, Jaye. You know that. Vince will see that—he'll learn. We've just got to give him time, and he's not going to learn anything if he's constantly shaking rubber snakes out of his boots or having to remake a short-sheeted bed."

Jaye gave him a mock frown, but following this man into battle for years had made it tough to refuse him, especially when his intentions were good. "OK, Hauser. You've got a deal. I'll talk to them. And I'll keep an eye on the kid. All right?"

"Thank you, Lady Jaye. It's appreciated." Duke smiled, then turned two of the frames on his desk to face her. One contained a picture of Scarlett by herself, sitting outdoors in civilian clothes with a solemnly adoring look on her face—it was that look Jaye had wanted to protect in case Duke hadn't been as serious about Scarlett as she was about him-and the other was of Duke in his dress greens and Scarlett in a vintage dress, bright hair curled. He had his hand at her waist, her arm resting on his; her opposite hand was clasped in his. They weren't looking at the camera, rather each other, as if the entire world was just the two of them. "I also need your help with this. Help me pick which one of these to throw in my suitcase."

Jaye lit up. " _Now_ you're talking." She immediately reached out and tapped an almond-shaped fingernail against the photo of Duke and Scarlett together.

Jaye remembered that night well; one of the consequences of the existence of the team being made public involved having to attend the annual military ball. Scarlett had flatly refused to wear anything puffy; Lady Jaye had loaned her the old-Hollywood style dress and had been so happy with how it had looked on her she had insisted the redhead keep it, something Scarlett had protested good-naturedly until she noticed Duke's jaw drop to his belt buckle at the sight of her, before he managed to collect himself. Cover Girl had done Scarlett's makeup and curled her hair, giving the redhead tips as though they were sorority sisters, and they'd tried to enjoy the command performance as much as possible. Duke, who probably would have been impressed even if she'd shown up in jeans, had stepped in to dance with Scarlett as often as he could get away with doing so. For her part, Lady Jaye had had to keep a bigger general distance from Flint than she'd been happy about, but the other Joes had been adorably diligent in keeping her and Scarlett occupied on the dance floor, cleverly helping to camouflage any instances of noticeable fraternization between them and Flint or Duke. In fact, on one occasion in which Duke had been unable to discreetly box out a too-interested interloper, Hawk himself had gallantly swept the redhead off for a waltz.

The photo in the frame had been taken by Cover Girl, who had come up with the brilliant idea of using a camera as a shield against having to dance with people she wasn't interested in. She had done her bit gladhanding with the brass, but for the most part she greeted someone's approach by immediately playing paparazzo, and the result had been a lot of fun pictures of the Joes as if they were simply normal partygoers instead of members of an elite special forces unit, presumed dead until recently.

"This one," Jaye said, nodding. "This was a great night. Scarlett is _hopeless_ at ballroom."

"She knew the foxtrot by the time the night was over," Duke defended with a smile. "We're still working on the Lindy."

"You were very gallant to let her step on your feet all night," Jaye laughed.

"Forget my feet. I don't have anything against Colonel Stoner, but I wish he'd stop trying to poach my best soldiers away. He'd snap Scarlett up in a second if she weren't on this team." Duke got up from his chair, tucking the framed photo into a file folder for the trip back to his quarters. Jaye rolled her eyes at his automatic instinct to hide it, but said nothing.

"Please. Scarlett in Strategic Hazard Intervention? She'd _be_ the hazard. Those guys are cream puffs." Jaye followed Duke out of the office and down the corridor. "Besides, I think she's got an incentive to stick around this Pit." She winked at him.

"Did I hear Scarlett's going to Hazard Intervention?" Flint said, coming out of his own office upon hearing the cadence of his beloved's voice in the hall. "Did she get a craving for cream puff?"

"Knock it off," Jaye said, but lovingly. "Oh, and you have to go take the red sock out of Falcon's laundry."

"What? Why?" Flint blurted out in disappointment, then realized Duke was in attendance and had the grace to flush.

Duke frowned at Jaye, who looked sheepish as she protested, "It was already done before I came to see you." Turning to Flint, she said, "We're officially going easier on the kid, so no red sock. Go take it out and bring it to me as proof you got it back."

Flint grumbled. "You guys aren't any fun."

"KP duty isn't any fun, either," Duke warned. "I better not hear my brother whining that all his jockey shorts are pink."

"At least you admit he's whiny," Flint said brazenly.

"I'm his brother," Duke sighed, "not deaf. I don't always like him—but I love him, so do this for me, please."

Flint's expression softened minutely; like Lady Jaye, he found it difficult to refuse his First Shirt when asked for a favor. "You got it, Top. One red sock back in the missile bay, I promise. Go enjoy your weekend with Scarlett."

"Scarlett isn't going," Jaye said.

"What! Why?!" Flint repeated, more forcefully and with even more disappointment than he had expressed over the red sock.

Duke gave another long-suffering sigh. "You can explain it to him, if he promises to keep his lips sealed for once," he told Lady Jaye, giving Flint a severe look. "And I _mean_ sealed, Flint. I haven't got time to tell the story again. I've got to head to Ops and book this, or I'm not going anywhere or seeing anyone this weekend."

"Going to see the Machine Gun?" Flint asked cheekily, and Lady Jaye rolled her eyes in amusement.

"Don't encourage her, Flint. She _loves_ it when we call her that."

Duke couldn't help but smile too. Angela Machine was one of the few personnel at the Pit who were _not_ Joes; she was a civilian contractor. She wasn't even combat-trained outside of the usual self-defense and emergency procedures, and she had spent an amusing summer huffing and puffing after Scarlett and Cover Girl on o-course practice runs when they could spare the time with her. Slender without being athletic, Machine was in no shape to keep up with the redhead and the strawberry blonde, and she had won the hearts of many a Joe, Duke included, who had found her dogged efforts to train with them nothing short of heroic. Despite her non-enlisted status, in Duke's opinion Angie Machine had one of the toughest, most annoying, most thankless jobs in the entire Pit. She was their admin assistant.

"Tell Machine we say hi," Jaye said. "And I want to know all about...you know."

"Hey, yeah, fill me in," Flint said cheerfully. "I promise, I'll take it to my grave."

Before Lady Jaye could, a cry of " _Gaaaaahd_ _ **damn**_ _it, you guys!_ " rang out through the corridor from somewhere nearby...in fact, Duke noted with dismay, from the direction of the laundry room.

Duke frowned at Lady Jaye and Flint, who winced, turning to each other.

"I'll probably be taking it to my grave sooner than I think," Flint said.

"Guess Falcon did his laundry early today," Jaye agreed sadly.

Duke stabbed the air between them with a finger. "Back to normal in ten minutes," he ordered.

"Roger," Jaye and Flint said in unison, turning to hurry in the opposite direction.

* * *

"Rat-a-tat-tat," Duke said by way of greeting when he arrived at Machine's office, knocking on her doorjamb, and Angie beamed; Lady Jaye hadn't been kidding about the kick she got out of her nickname. "Got a minute?"

"For you, Sergeant Hauser? I have ten," Angie assured him, green eyes sparkling happily; she was rarely in a bad mood. She swiveled in her chair, planted her elbows on the desktop and propped her chin on her hands cheerfully. "Need someone to defuse an IED? Interrogate a Cobra trooper? Reprogram a laser?"

"I need someone to book a flight to Missouri." Duke said, trying not to laugh.

"Oh, thank Colton. I can't do any of those other things," Angie said with exaggerated relief, and Duke gave in and chuckled.

"Headed to the old homestead?" Angie asked, rolling a form expertly into her typewriter and sliding the bar over.

"Just for the weekend," Duke clarified. "I haven't been in a while." He gave her the details of his travel and she took it all down with the speed of practice.

"Just you?" Angie's green eyes twinkled knowingly as she tapped keys. "Or should I book a ticket for a redhead?"

"Are you inviting yourself along, Machine?" Duke teased.

Angie patted her upswept copper hair. "I hate to break your heart, tall blond and handsome, but I am hopelessly out of your league. Don't you worry, though, I betcha there's another redhead you can charm around here."

"I can only hope," Duke said. Joseph H. Colton, did _everyone_ know? Were his feelings that plain on his face these days? "Just the one ticket, thanks. If I'm lucky, maybe I can book two next time."

Angie favored him with a soft smile. "Sergeant, I think you know just how lucky you are." Sitting upright, she smiled and rolled the finished form out of the typewriter. "Sign here please. I'll call the airline and pull the trigger on this."

Duke signed the form with a rueful smile. She was right; he knew _exactly_ how lucky he was, and that was what everyone was seeing in his eyes—it had become too strong for him to hide it any longer. "That's why they call you the Machine Gun."

"Rat-a-tat-tat! I know it," Angie said, winking at him. "Enjoy your trip, Sergeant Hauser."

* * *

Brett Glieson had a problem.

It was a problem that made his gaze furtive, eyes tracking like nervous radar as if he thought he was being watched. It made him shake with barely controlled nerves, and if someone called his name from behind him or laid a friendly hand on his shoulder, he was apt to jump right out of his shoes as if he'd been electrified. It made him scratch anxiously at his forearms, pushing the buttoned cuffs of his shirt up so his bitten nails could scrape at the skin which always felt a size too small.

Brett Glieson had a problem, but despite his mannerisms, that problem was not drug abuse. In fact, he had never touched any of that stuff, waving away the rolled-up fiver and the makeup mirror when they made their rounds at the parties he and his friends frequented. He didn't need that added stress, or the tattoos of needle-marks some of his friends sported; even if he could have afforded it, which he couldn't these days, he had no interest in taking a ride on that particular train.

No, cards and dice had been all the ruination Brett Glieson had needed.

The reason he was twitching and jumping at shadows was because he was in debt, and deep; Brett Glieson, like so many gamblers before him, had gotten a taste of beginner's luck at a craps table in a place with the adorable name of the Rabbit's Foot, a name that had well-camouflaged the nightmare he had eventually discovered within. He had ignored the warnings of his fellow gamblers and his own rational mind not to chase. Brett had chased, and before he had known it, he had been into the house for seven grand.

"Thank you for calling American Airlines. Where can I help you go today?"

Brett was amazed at how calm and professional he sounded, even with the Cup of Death floating before his eyes. He could see the path his life had made to this point, superimposed over everything he did, dipping and spiking like an EKG. Seven grand had been terrifying, and he'd borrowed to break even, but the siren call of the cards and the dice had proved in the end too strong. Seven grand had become ten grand, ten grand fifteen, and borrowing had become begging. When fifteen had become tweny-five, begging had become stealing; his friends had drugs and drugs could be turned into money, which could be turned back into more drugs, which meant more money his friends didn't notice disappear when they were stoned to their eyeballs at one of those house parties.

And if the ones his friends sold for _did_ notice it disappearing, well...this was an emergency, Brett reasoned. Larry's arm and ribs had healed, and it wasn't like he wasn't still doing business with Pinky Cordero and snorting his profits up his nose. This wasn't about Larry's nose or Pinky Cordero's inflated sense of gang hierarchy; this was Brett's _life_ they were talking about here.

Brett wasn't naive; it _was_ his life on the line this time. He was into the house for forty grand this time, and it had been made very clear to him one night at the casino's bar what would happen to him if he didn't square up. He had been trying to steel his nerves with alcohol, reasoning that he could think better when he was relaxed, and maybe then he could come up with a way to dig himself out of this ever-deepening hole he seemed to be in.

It wasn't that she had _hopped_ onto the barstool beside him exactly; more that she had simply floated like smoke to her sitting position, becoming solid only when her movement stopped. Despite the axe hanging over his head, Brett had noticed her—a woman whose straight dark hair fell down her back in a shining onyx curtain, and whose obsidian eyes flickered casually over the drink menu before resting on him. A deep v-neck blouse showed a teasing glimpse of cleavage, and her legs were long beneath her miniskirt. Her complexion was sweet, soft caramel, her cheekbones high and angular, something that lent a little cruelty to her face even in its dark loveliness.

"Buy me a drink, handsome?" The voice was full of its own music, like water running over rock, and still had a girlish lilt to it, which made it all the more unnerving somehow.

Brett's tongue had stuck in his mouth; while he didn't consider himself a troll, it wasn't often he was called handsome by a woman who looked this good, especially these days, when his tie always seemed askew and his hair was tousled unappealingly from the constant nervous run of his sweaty hands through it. Before he could answer, however, the bartender, a man with a low ponytail bound neatly at the base of his skull and an earring, had snorted.

"You're wasting your time, gorgeous. Glieson can't afford the _water_ in this place."

"Screw you, Harry," Brett had hissed; it wasn't just that the bartender was making him look foolish in front of a beautiful woman, but that his attention had been forcibly and unwillingly returned to his problem.

"Water is free," the woman had protested coquettishly, and the bartender had laughed.

"When you're in as deep as our buddy Brett here, the air you _breathe_ is borrowed."

Brett's throat had locked with an audible clicking sound. Much as he had wanted to smash Harry's face into the mirrored backsplash behind the bar, the little creep was right. Slithering off the stool, he had hurried out a side door, not wanting to see the look of amused contempt on the beautiful, somehow haughty face.

However, making a quick getaway to the side alley had quickly proved to be a mistake; he had only known the two goons waiting there by sight, but he had known who they represented well enough. It was they who informed him that if he didn't pay his markers before a date that already seemed far too close, he would not be throwing dice or flipping cards in the Rabbit's Foot anymore, and the good travelers on American Airlines would be calling someone else to handle their bookings. They had left him in the alley with no usable fingers, a broken rib, a black eye and a broken nose; when this first taste of the final darkness had come, Brett had welcomed it.

He had woken up an indeterminate amount of time later to see the woman from the bar leaning over him.

He had tried to speak but had only managed to cough up blood, and her very human reaction—a slight wrinkling of her pert nose—had helped him realize that he was not dreaming.

In fact, it would turn out to be the exact opposite.

"The man behind the bar is wrong." Her voice had been cold, sneeringly condescending, a far cry from the flirty greeting she had offered inside the casino. The dark, shining hair brushed against him as she leaned closer. "You steal the air you breathe like a thief, Brett Glieson. You haven't been worthy enough to deserve your pathetic existence for quite some time now, and you know it, don't you?"

Brett had tried to prop himself up on his elbows, but she had shoved him back down roughly, making him wheeze with the pain of his injured rib. There had been a terrible needlelike pain in his side as she straddled him, and something he might have found pleasurable under other circumstances quickly became a nightmare. He had hoped his lungs had not been punctured.

"On the ground, you mewling cur. You should feel quite comfortable there."

"Help..." Brett had managed to gasp.

And unbelievably, the dark woman had smiled, and it was awful. It was a lovely smile, pink lips curving sweetly, but Brett had known somehow it was awful all the same, the way the pattern of an adder's scales could be iridescent and lovely. The black eyes had sparkled, and that was vaguely disgusting too, the rainbow scum on a puddle of oil. The cruel cheekbones had slashed the air around her face.

"Oh, but Mr. Glieson," she had said, voice thick and sweet and dark like the sage honey he had been served in the diners of his home town, "that is exactly what I am here to do."

It had been becoming increasingly clear to Brett that he needed medical attention, but the dark woman had spoken leisurely, as though they had had all the time in the world, stroking his hair from his bloody brow in a grotesque parody of comfort. "You see, I know all about you, Mr. Brett Glieson of 8701 4th Avenue, Brooklyn, formerly of New Mexico. You work for an airline, booking trips for travelers. You live alone, it's doubtful anyone would miss you should you not show up at a house party to decline the cocaine when it calls your name, and there are forty thousand reasons you might not live to see another summer."

Brett had cleared a throatful of his own blood and managed to get out, "What...do you...want?"

She had blinked long-lashed obsidian eyes and trilled, "Want? Why, just that you do your job, Mr. Glieson. Book flights. Field phone calls. Write down all their information for your systems...and be on the lookout for a name. Just one name."

Brett had given a hacking cough, and she rode this atop him, face as blank and lovely as a marble angel's in a graveyard. "Why should I do this?" he grated out. "What if I don't? You'll kill me? You said it yourself. I'm dead anyway if I can't get that forty Gs, and I haven't got a hope in hell. I'm tapped out."

The woman's smile had returned, all darkly bubbling insanity and smug power. "On the contrary, Mr. Glieson. I think, should you survive this night, you will find a deposit of five thousand dollars in your bank account, simply for living long enough to listen to me."

Brett had blinked sweat-starred eyelashes. "What?"

"And another five thousand at the end of this week," she had continued. "Five thousand the week after...and five thousand the week after that. You may, should you be able to curtail your idiotic urge to set your money on fire playing cards and throwing dice, even have enough to save your own life, just in time for the deadline I heard those two musclebound gorillas impress on you."

"All I have to do is look for a name?" Brett had asked, suspicious of the fact that she'd overheard the deadline but unable to ignore the temptation of this lifeline any longer. His injuries seemed to fade into the background; those obsidian eyes had filled the world.

"Just one name," the dark woman had purred, taking what looked like a business card out of her cleavage and holding it up between two fingers. "It's printed on here, and there is a telephone number. Should you come across this name in your bookings, you will call the number and inform the recording machine on the other end that you have booked it a flight. You will receive a message no more than twenty-four hours later with a meeting place and time, and upon your arrival and confirmation of your information, I will do what is necessary to free you from the remainder of your debt."

"What's in it for you?" he had asked, and the black eyes had gone cold. Instead of answering, she had revealed that she had been present the entire time the Rabbit's Foot's security team had been beating the stuffing out of him.

"They said they would pull out your fingernails, Mr. Glieson, and split your lying tongue in two. Do you really care what's in it for me?"

Brett had shuddered. "How do I know I can trust you?"

She had smiled again. "You don't, but I assure you, your bank account has already been increased by five thousand dollars. When you leave the hospital tonight—poor thing, you _do_ look like you need to go to the hospital—you will check an automated teller machine and know that I speak the truth."

She squeezed him with her strong, smoothly muscled thighs, and the pain had made him bark his assent. "Deal! Deal. Give me the card. I'll watch for the name."

"It has truly been a pleasure, Mr. Glieson," the dark woman had said, rising off him; in the arc-sodium light from the bulb over the casino's side door, she had looked as though she were ascending to heaven, despite all the evidence Brett had seen indicating that she would not be welcome there.

He had grayed out again, mercifully, and when he had come to it had been in an ambulance; he had let them splint his broken fingers, set his nose, tape his broken rib, then slept gratefully, hoping the gorillas from the Rabbit's Foot would not be able to breach the nurse's station. The white card with the name and number on it had been in the pocket of his suit jacket.

And when he had been released, he had gone straight to his bank and had seen that it was absolutely true; a deposit had been made to his account in the amount of five thousand dollars.

He had ignored the confirmation numbers and computer-garbled information at the bottom of the deposit record the teller had printed out for him; 0000174993821 ABA ROUTING 080440812 ARBCO ENTERPRISES WIRE IN CONF 99677120. Those numbers meant nothing to him in comparison to the balance at the bottom of the ledger: $5332.00, soon to be more.

And it had indeed become more; every week, the balance in his account had increased by five thousand dollars. The temptation to run out and make it grow had been awful, but his slowly healing bruises—along with the memory of that sneeringly beautiful face twisted in scorn—somehow gave him resolve that years of threats to inflict bodily harm on him had been unable to. Every Friday, when he checked the deposit to his account, he allowed himself to indulge in a fantasy: he would give up the cards and dice, move away from the city, somewhere he had never been and was not known, and start over. Maybe L.A., with its beaches, the Pacific Ocean, the scent of sunscreen making everything feel like an eternal summer...

Then, on this not-so-very special day when the balance in his account sat comfortably near the thirty thousand mark, he saw it, glowing greenly from the black screen of his PC.

GATE  
13

GATE CLOSES  
13:10

SEAT  
16A

FLIGHT NUMBER  
AA 67301

PASSENGER CONRSHA  
HAUSER, CONRAD S.

CLASS  
ECONOMY

JFK/STL

DEPARTURE  
JFK  
NEW YORK CITY

ARRIVAL  
STL  
ST. LOUIS

Brett Glieson's hands started to shake; he willed them to be still and picked up his telephone, fighting to keep his voice calm as he dialed the number on the now dog-eared white card that had been riding in his wallet ever since that fateful night at the Rabbit's Foot.

"This is Brett Glieson at American Airlines, calling to confirm your flight information for this weekend. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to call our toll-free line..."

But it wasn't the toll-free line Brett Glieson gave the recorder whose wheels were audibly spinning on the other end of the call; it was his personal telephone number.

* * *

"So what are you going to do when you go home?" Scarlett asked as she drowsed in Duke's arms late one night—they'd repaid Hawk's faith in them by continuing a strict level of discretion even after he'd become wise to what was between them, but the chain of events that had revealed it to Hawk had also prompted the other Joes to begin noticing things they hadn't before. For instance, Law had begun to conveniently look the other way if he came upon Scarlett anywhere near the field commander's quarters (Law was already quite used to looking past Lady Jaye, but Flint was not in command of the team, nor did he have the same reservations about public knowledge of his extracurricular activities). Scarlett and Duke used this advantage but did not abuse it; Duke had become increasingly less fond of sleeping without Scarlett in his arms, and he was neither about to do nor encourage her to do anything that would jeopardize the nights she shared his bed. Instead, he simply looked forward to those times, then folded the memories of them along the creases and carried them with him the way a soldier in the Pacific Theater might have tucked a love letter from his sweetheart into a pocket of his BDUs.

This was one of those precious nights, and Duke lay contentedly in bed with Scarlett in his arms, savoring the lingering scent of the jasmine bath oil that was one of her few indulgences on base, enjoying the stroke of her soft hair along his bare skin. She was snuggled up to his side with her head on his chest the way he liked after loving, her fingers tangling in the chain of his dog tags. She liked to play with them when they cuddled, and Duke hardly minded, enjoying the little tugs of the chain, her fingertips skimming flirtatiously over his chest.

He smiled. "Get a good night's sleep, for one. See if Mama and Daddy need help with anything while I'm there, most likely. Promised Mama I'd sit down to at least one good home-cooked meal and a beer or two. Ride, if I have time—I'm really looking forward to that."

"I'd pay to see you on horseback, cowboy. I'll bet it's adorable," Scarlett teased, tilting her head up to grin at him.

"Maybe someday you can come home with me and we can ride together, city girl," he teased right back, trying not to let on how excited the idea of bringing her home with him made him.

Scarlett laughed. "I couldn't even tell you the last time I was on a horse. I think it was a pony ride at my brother Sean's birthday party."

Duke chuckled, brushing a red forelock off her brow. "I'd help you," he said. "If you were really nervous, you could always ride with me."

"Think your horse could handle that?" she asked.

"Are you kidding? He's a tank. In fact, I almost named him that."

"Almost?" Scarlett asked. Duke got the feeling she liked to hear him talk about his home and his family; he was the sort of person who kept his personal life at a very safe distance from his professional life, and while Scarlett knew Duke quite well, she always treated chances to get to know Conrad Hauser with respectful but eager curiosity.

"Not that it fit him when he was a colt. He was so cute, the little shit," Duke said fondly, remembering, and Scarlett laughed. "Real rebellious, too, till he grew up some and settled down. I guess we had that in common. But Mama said she'd rather I didn't name him Tank because she was worried enough about me, and she didn't want to be reminded of that every time she watered or exercised the horses," he explained, voice softening at the memories of home and family. "I gave her the naming of him instead, so she could have something a little more cheerful to hold onto during the times I was deployed."

"Fluffy?" Scarlett guessed cheekily, and he laughed aloud, but only briefly; when he spoke again his voice was warm with affection for the woman who'd borne him and the horse she'd named for him.

"Patriot is anything but fluffy. He seems like an ornery son of a bitch, but once he gets used to you he's dependable as hell."

"Sounds like his rider," Scarlett murmured sweetly, toying idly with his dog tags so they clinked against each other. "Patriot, hmm? I like it."

"His full name's Patriot's Glory. Tell you the truth, the whole thing made me a little bashful, but I wasn't about to argue with her. It seemed to make her happy." Duke felt his face burn with the last vestiges of that long-ago shyness, the worry that the people he loved built him up far higher than he deserved.

"I think it suits you both just fine," Scarlett declared with conviction, then added in a softer voice, "Where do you ride?"

"Wherever we want," Duke said, almost dreamily. "My family has quite a bit of land out there. I'll pack a bag and stay out as long as possible, if I'm not needed at home. Sometimes I like to imagine none of it's settled, and we can keep going, just me and my horse, nowhere to be and no one at our heels. The world's all ours, as far as we can ride."

Scarlett was quiet, her head dropping back to his chest—she was purposely not looking at him now, and he wondered how her mind's eye was interpreting these words. Finally, she said, very quietly, "I'd love to go for a ride someday. If you'll take me along."

He knew she was asking for more than to see his land or ride his horses, and he tilted her chin up so he could look her in the eyes as he answered this question. "That's a promise, darling." He punctuated this with a kiss, and she smiled as he drew back. "Unfortunately, it can't be this time. My folks haven't seen me in a while and there's a lot I want to catch them up on." He stroked her hair tenderly, hoping the caress would emphasize exactly what he planned to catch them up on. "But I'll get you on my horse sooner than you think, trust me."

"With my life," Scarlett said, one of her favorite ways to answer that particular entreaty, and she wrapped an arm possessively around him as she cuddled close, pressing her ear fondly over his chest to listen to his heartbeat. "With my heart."

Duke turned out to be right about his horse, although not in the way he had anticipated.

* * *

It happened again that night.

 _Their favorite way to sleep was two spoons in a drawer, Scarlett's head pillowed on one of Duke's arms while the other curled protectively around her. He'd nuzzle her hair and gather her close against him, and she'd bask happily in his warmth, falling asleep to the strong, steady rhythm of his heartbeat at her back._

 _But when she woke up she was cold, and stiff. She was fully dressed in BDUs, her breastplate digging uncomfortably into the side she was lying on. There was no muscular arm pillowing her head, or wrapped comfortingly around her waist. She wasn't even in bed—she was lying on a cold stone floor, gritty with dirt, and the dark was not the familiar, loved dark of her field commander's quarters on the rare nights she got to share them with him._

 _She lifted her head slightly to look around, but that was as far as she got; something around her throat suddenly tightened and pulled, yanking her backwards._

 _Scarlett's body fishtailed in panic, hands flying to the loathsome scratching pressure at her throat, fingers trying to get beneath it to lift it away from her skin. Somehow, as her eyes bulged and her respiration became a reedy wheeze, she got one foot under her and pushed, stumbling upright abruptly, and this caused the hellish line of pain across her neck to cut further into her skin with the help of gravity; she realized there was something behind her holding it taut._

 _Almost no air now. With the last of her oxygen—and, she was afraid, sanity-she managed to chamber her elbow in the way her muscles remembered even when her conscious mind was too terrified to, and pistoned it back, connecting solidly with whatever had her. Mercifully, the chafing pressure at her throat ceased, as if a switch had been turned off. Something fell down her front, brushing her arm like a terrible scurrying insect, but she hadn't the strength to swat it aside and it fell away on its own almost immediately._

 _When she'd struck, someone else's breath had blown out in a_ _ **whoosh**_ _. In her mind's eye, Scarlett saw the logical position an opponent struck in this manner would end up in; slightly doubled over, and almost automatically, she snapped her fist up and out behind her, spinning slightly to put the power of her entire body behind the blow. Once again she connected, and there was a high squeak of pain._

 _Whirling, Scarlett put her back against the wall she'd lain down near, eyes tracking like nervous radar trying to adjust to the darkness. Nothing leaped out at her, but she heard sounds—t he soft murmurs and gasps of other people, surprised out of slumber. If her assailant was whimpering in pain, these cries masked it; they all sounded alike in the gloom._

 _Her night vision was ruined almost immediately; running footsteps grew increasingly louder as the bobbing glow of a lantern appeared some ways off, the halo of light getting bigger as it drew closer. Iron bars threw shadows across her surroundings, and she remembered, yes, this was a cell, she was a prisoner—_ _ **they**_ _were prisoners; she could see the owners of the voices she'd heard in the dark. Other prisoners, men and women, some barely more than children, all with sleepy, frightened eyes and straggling hair, gaunt from being locked up without proper food or enough water._

 _As soon as there was enough light, Scarlett looked around, checking their faces for a black eye, a bloody nose—but they all looked back at her with scared, confused expressions; not one of them looked injured._

 _So who had she hit? Who had tried to cut off her air with a scratching, scraping_ _ **something**_ _around her neck?_

 _Who had wanted to kill her?_

 _"What's all that racket?" The lantern had reached the cell door. It was held aloft by a Cobra guard, who looked equally upset about being disturbed, his brown eyes angry over his balaclava, brow furrowed. Fixing that furious gaze on Scarlett, the only prisoner who was standing, he swung what he held in his other hand at her—a pistol. "You. G.I. Joe. What's all the noise?"_

 _Scarlett glanced back at her cellmates, waiting to see if any of them would speak up. No one did._

 _"Are you deaf, red hair?" the Cobra sneered. "Get over here."_

 _ **Like hell**_ _, Scarlett thought, but said nothing, and did not move closer to the bars._

 _The guard shifted his aim to the group of prisoners on the far end of the cell. They reacted as expected; some crying out, others hiding their faces as they huddled closer together. "Answer my question, or I start target shooting," the guard threatened, and one of the girls squealed in terror._

 _Scarlett strode quickly to the bars, putting herself between the prisoners and the gun. The guard relaxed, the barrel of the gun dropping slightly. "That's better. One more time. What the hell was that all about?"_

 _Scarlett chanced a quick glance to where she had been sleeping, and that was when she saw it—a dirty, frayed length of hemp rope lying on the floor of the cell. She swallowed, the skin of her neck sizzling with friction burn._

 _"Nothing," she said to the guard, and was relieved to hear how calm she sounded. "I had a nightmare." Feeling a perverse need to lash out at her captors, for putting her here, in this place where someone had tried to end her life, where she had been_ _ **scared**_ _—that was the thing she hated the most, that it had scared her—she added, "I dreamed I was marrying Cobra Commander."_

 _The guard wasn't amused. "You're going to wish you were when you find out what they've got in store for_ _ **you**_ _, G.I. Pretty. In the meantime try to dream a little more quietly, or I might have to start playing Duck Hunt with you guys."_

 _It was on the tip of Scarlett's acid tongue to call him a coward, but her eyes flickered to the group of (mostly) innocent people in the corner of the cell, and she didn't want to risk their safety for her momentary satisfaction. Instead she simply met his eyes, letting him see her fury in them before he fired his parting salvo—he spat in her face, the worst he could do through the bars without using his pistol, and swung around, sauntering back off down the corridor, the lantern light getting smaller and smaller._

 _Not wanting to dwell on the guard's threat, Scarlett wiped her face and moved back into the cell. When she reached the length of rope, she got slowly to her knees and picked it up, then rose again, never taking her eyes off her cellmates. Holding it out at chest height with one end in each hand, she deliberately pulled as hard as she could. The rope hadn't been strong to start with, and her recent efforts to remove it from her throat had strained it even further; it didn't take much force to snap it. She dropped the useless ends of the ruined rope like the garbage they now were, never taking her freezing gaze off the captives across the cell._

 _No one spoke, not then, and not when she backed against the wall, sliding down slowly to sit facing her cellmates._

 _She sat like that in the dark for she didn't know how long, but she was so tired; she caught her eyelids flickering and the cell's interior going in and out of focus. She fought it, knowing there was a chance, however small, that whoever had tried to take her out might try again—perhaps it was even two of them, three of them,_ _ **all**_ _of them! She could not sleep, must not sleep._

 _ **No**_ _, she thought as her eyes slid closed and she forced them open for only a second before they were closing again._ _ **If I close my eyes it'll be for the last time! Got to...I can't...**_

 _And in the dark, she felt the horrible constriction at her throat again, fought madly against it, knowing that this time her luck had run out, and it wouldn't be enough._

* * *

"Scarlett. Scarlett! _Shana_!"

Her hand flew to her throat, fingers sliding beneath what was choking her—it scraped against her skin and she pulled as hard as she could, feeling it snap and fall slack in her hand. Arms closed around her and she threw them off wildly, ripping air into her lungs.

"Shana. _Shana_! Wake up!"

She was not in a Cobra cell—that had been a lifetime ago, long before the first time she'd slept in this bed—and this voice was one she knew and loved, calling her as he tried a second time to pull her to him. She allowed him to wrap his arms around her this time, and the air she pulled into her terror-constricted lungs carried a scent as well-known and well-loved as the voice; clean and masculine, carbolic soap and the faintest remainder of aftershave. Duke—yes, she was with Duke; his voice had pulled her out of the nightmare.

She let it all enfold her—his voice, his arms, his scent—let him armor her against the sharp edges of her memories.

"The tags," he assured her softly, urgently. "It's your tags, Scarlett. Your dog tags were tangled around your neck. You're all right. You're safe. I'm here. I'm here."

She looked at her clenched fist and saw that he was absolutely right—in her panic, she had torn her own dog tags from around her neck. She took a shuddery breath, watching them swing at the end of the chain.

Duke's big hand was incongruously gentle as it stroked comfortingly down her hair, her back. "Same one?" he asked softly.

She nodded, unable to tear her eyes from the swinging tags.

"Did you see who it was?"

She loved him all the more for asking the question, the same way he did every time this happened. He was convinced that her subconscious knew who had attacked her, no matter how many times Scarlett had told him that she hadn't seen her assailant. He thought that the source of her discomfort hadn't been the attack itself—it was hardly the first or the last attempt to kill her—but the uncertainty, and it was his belief that once she knew who had been behind the assault, she could face the memory on equal ground and it would lose its power.

Scarlett wasn't sure if he was right, but his practical assessment of the situation, his seemingly unending patience with being woken in the night by her crying out in panic-she only wished she could show him how grateful she was for it by overcoming the nightmares in exactly the manner he had such faith she would. But no matter how many times she woke in a cold sweat pulling imaginary ropes off her neck and gasping for air, the dream—the _memory_ —was always the same. A rope around her neck, a near-blind struggle, but no face, nothing she could use to identify the monster in the dark.

She shook her head in defeat, the tags swinging at the end of the chain dangling from her fist blurring with sudden, embarrassing tears. She inhaled slowly, deeply, fighting not to let them fall.

Duke's hand was on hers, gently disengaging her fingers from the chain. She let him take it from her, missing his warmth as he briefly leaned away from her to place it on his simple nightstand. "Want the light?" he asked softly, as if she was a child, but there was nothing patronizing in his tone, just concern, and she knew he would leave it on all night if she asked him to. He often made his own unwilling journeys through the realm of nightmares, and when he surfaced from them she comforted him, just as he was comforting her now; he knew from experience how she was feeling. She shook her head once more, voice breaking tearfully as she nuzzled into his shoulder.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..."

"Darling, don't," Duke soothed, holding her close. "It's OK."

Scarlett sniffed wrathfully, hiding her face. "It's... _selfish_ to keep waking you like this...selfish to be upset or afraid at all when I have you."

Drawing back a little, Duke brushed his knuckles beneath her chin, urging her to tilt her face up to him.

"Shana, listen to me," he whispered affectionately. "You don't have to pretend my love makes your life perfect. It doesn't do that—love doesn't make the bad things just go away." She blinked teary eyes at him, and he ran gentle fingertips across her brow, sweeping her bangs aside. "And it's not selfish to reach for me when you're hurting. I'll always hold you."

Scarlett searched his eyes for the impatience, the exasperation, the frustration she'd been expecting; only love was there. Shy under that adoring gaze, she dropped her head, hiding her face in the juncture of his neck and shoulder. "Don't let me go."

"Never," he answered immediately, tightening his embrace and brushing his lips against the crown of her head as he spoke. "You're safe with me. You're safe."

Scarlett let his words lull her— _felt_ safe, as he lay down once more with her in his arms. Instead of giving him her back to spoon her, she rested her head on his chest, focusing on the steady beat of his heart and the soothing feeling of his fingers in her hair. Just before sleep overcame her once more she clutched reflexively at his dog tags, unable to help herself, holding them tightly like a talisman.

Duke closed his hand over hers with a gentle squeeze, his voice following her down into slumber. "I'm here, Scarlett." She felt his kiss on her forehead, like a blessing, and then knew no more until the sun came up.

* * *

As reluctant as they always were to part ways, it was all business the next morning-Scarlett had an early martial-arts training session with a group of newer Joes, which Duke knew to include not only Falcon but Jinx, and for two entirely different reasons, she refused to look silly in front of either of them by being late or looking anything less than the picture of poise. He didn't push her about Falcon—while he appreciated her valiant efforts to play nice in front of him, he was aware of her apparent dislike for his brother. She had been bluntly honest about the reason on the occasion that Duke had attempted to discuss it with her; he had thought she was overreacting and had told her so, but at the same time found he couldn't bring himself to fault her for feeling as she did, knowing he would have reacted the same way had their positions been reversed. Falcon wasn't helping his own case, either—while Scarlett at least attempted to remain civil and professional while interacting with Falcon, for Duke's sake if nothing else, Falcon didn't even pretend to be polite to her. This gave Duke zero ground to stand on when asking Scarlett to try harder to keep the peace, and while he never admitted it outright, he wished his brother would take his feelings into consideration.

For now, when it came to the subject of Vincent Falcone, Duke and Scarlett had agreed to disagree, but Duke held out hope that his beloved and his brother could eventually come to some kind of understanding. Right now the only thing they were likely to do together was kill each other, but he refused to stop trying to get them to see the good in each other, the things that gave them both such a hold on his heart.

As for Jinx, Scarlett found her to be an amusing novelty; just as her ears perked whenever she heard something about Duke's civilian life, she looked at anything that could give her clues to Snake Eyes' shadowed past as a lucky break, and Jinx was a jackpot. Scarlett had once joked that Jinx was as close as she'd get to stumbling on embarrassing baby pictures of Snake, and his self-conscious reaction was the only thing that saved her from his swat; normally even she wasn't fast enough to duck his eerie speed.

Jinx and Scarlett were united on another front as well, and it made Duke cringe—Falcon had wasted exactly no time in noticing Jinx's dark, inscrutable eyes and trim figure, and he had become a near-constant source of annoyance for the newest martial artist on the Joe team. Jinx made no secret of the fact that she was completely unimpressed by the courting male in full plumage, and Duke had once overheard her tell his brother that he sounded like "a bad episode of _Miami Vice_." Falcon had not been deterred by this insult, nor by Duke's lecture on fraternization (Duke's credibility in that area was, for better or worse, lacking), and he and Jinx were like flint and tinder, although the spark between them seemed only to be Jinx's easily ignitable temper.

Duke's heart hurt briefly at the sight of the shadows under Scarlett's eyes; he knew she'd had a poor night's sleep. Even after she had overcome her nightmare and succumbed to slumber again, she had been restless in his arms, sometimes shuddering, sometimes struggling briefly against his hold until he soothed her with a stroke of her hair and a quiet reminder of his presence, although she had not woken a second time.

He liked to think they had each gone a long way towards staying the other's nightmares—he knew for sure that it helped him to bury his face in her hair, feel her warmth and know that the most horrible days of his life were past and getting further in the rear view every second, to fall back to sleep imagining a much better future with her at his side. He hoped he had been able to do the same for her; still, this particular recurring nightmare troubled him the most out of any that woke her gasping in the night. It didn't happen often (and he worried protectively about the nights he wasn't there to comfort her when the nightmares came), but when it did, it was like as not this memory that she was battling.

Wishing her exhaustion was the result of nothing more than a late night spent making love, he met her in his galley kitchen with a cup of coffee and a tender kiss of her cheek. "Teach them well today. Try not to kill my brother."

She accepted the kiss with a demure blush and the coffee with a grateful smile at his jest. "Want company tonight?"

"I always want your company, Red, but I'm afraid I can't tonight. Mama wanted me home in time for dinner tonight but there's no way I would have made it, so I had Machine book me a late flight. Figure I'll roll in after they've gone to bed, hit the rack for a few hours and be fresh to say hello properly at breakfast."

Scarlett looked briefly disappointed, but recovered quickly, putting her coffee on his small counter and stepping close enough for him to put his arms around her. "Well, if you're going to kiss me off then I want my kiss. Come here, soldier."

Duke had absolutely no complaints about that, sucking her lower lip into his mouth playfully as she kissed him. "Why don't I make a date with you for when I get back? We could go off-base, have dinner, maybe take a stroll after?" He smiled, remembering the photograph he'd tucked into his suitcase—he hadn't told Lady Jaye, but he was bringing that home to show his mother, so that when she inevitably asked about the woman his father's compass had pointed to, she could look at the photo and see the sparkle of his beloved's soft smile...see the expression on his face and know how happy Scarlett made him. "If we find a place with some music, we could work on your Lindy."

She lit up at the thought, and the expression was so innocently delighted that he felt a pang in his chest. "That would be lovely," she admitted almost shyly. "It's been a long time."

"I know. Too long, and I'm sorry about that." He kissed her again briefly, then smiled. "I'll make it special for you, I promise."

Scarlett tightened her embrace, as if he would be gone for months and she was trying to memorize him. "You can make even a cup of coffee special, Top. Be safe on your trip. Say hello to Patriot for me."

He laughed. "Will do. All systems go."

"Roger that," she answered, stepping reluctantly out of his arms. Eyes sparkling, she retrieved her coffee, kissed her fingertips and waved at him as she slipped out his door.

He indeed intended to make their next "date" special, no matter where they ended up; he was just hoping he could manage to find the time to take her off-base as he had suggested. What he had in mind didn't seem so special in his quarters, which was lately the only place they had any privacy besides the times in which they were able to run together. Pushing the problem aside for the time being, he glanced at the clock and realized he had to move or he'd be late to his own training session. In contrast to Scarlett, however, he was the trainee, not the trainer.

They had chosen the sand pit on the o-course as their designated meeting place, agreeing that it was best not to do this in the gym if Scarlett was going to be training Joes on the mats in there. Naturally, his companion was already waiting for him.

{ _Late,_ } Snake Eyes said, managing somehow to chide with a simple sign. But his second sign was one of brotherly concern. { _Long night_?}

"Yes, but not the way you're thinking of," Duke sighed, slinging his rucksack to the ground before kneeling to take his supplies out of it.

Snake's head tilted in curiosity. { _Nightmares_?}

Duke nodded, finding what he was looking for—a roll of medical tape.

{ _You or her_?}

"Her. I swear on my father's grave that if I could go back in time and beat the hell out of whoever did that to her..." Duke groused, the tape making a high-pitched purring sound as he wrapped his hands with the quick, experienced pace of a seasoned bare knuckle fighter.

{ _I know,_ } Snake agreed, dropping easily into a front stance. Instead of putting his fists up, he signed an offer. { _Pretend I'm him._ }

* * *

Given all he'd done and seen in his years of service, there were many things Conrad Hauser woke up every morning grateful for, including but not limited to his recovery from a spear to the chest, the ability to stay in contact with his family now that the existence of the team was public knowledge, and the love of his life. However, the unexpected strengthening of his comradeship with Snake Eyes was something that never failed to surprise him, and he was no less grateful for that.

In a way, it had been inevitable; when Scarlett had been suspended between life and death after an unexpectedly hellish mission and Snake Eyes had been the first to deduce that Duke's frantic concern for her had been that of her lover and not just her comrade-in-arms, they'd had to have a man-to-man talk. Despite the stress of that conversation, it had yielded the best possible outcome Duke could have hoped for—the two men had agreed that while it had become clear Scarlett herself loved each of them in different ways, they both loved her more than anything else in the world, and the already healthy amount of respect they had held for each other had taken on new meaning in the aftermath of these revelations.

For Duke, it was an eye-opening experience, as he had spent the entirety of his life being the elder brother; however, when it came to Snake Eyes, he always felt somehow like the clumsier, less clever, less wise sibling. It was with that mindset that he had approached Snake with the idea of one-on-one training.

{ _Why me?_ } Snake had signed, and Duke had been able to tell he was amused by the request; it had been irritating not to be taken seriously, but amusing Snake was always better than angering him. { _You're hardly helpless in a fight, and if it's martial arts training you want, Scarlett can teach you._ }

"Sure, Scarlett _can_ teach me," Duke had argued, "but there's something you know that she doesn't. Something only you can help me with."

Snake's posture had shifted, his steel spine straightening as his attention was piqued. This was a good sign; interesting Snake was better even than amusing him. He had waited, which was as good as telling Duke to go on.

"Remember when Scarlett was trying to teach me to block with my weaker arm? I was too slow, and she knocked me out."

Snake's spine had melted just a little, in a way that made Duke very aware of his mask hiding a devilish grin. He remembered, all right, and his next action had confirmed it—the shake of his strong shoulders that always accompanied his silent laughter.

"Shut up," Duke had muttered, but not unkindly. "My point is, I was slow to block that day, and she rang my bell. And I was slow because I'm not good enough yet to hold my own against her, or you. Who else won't I be good enough to hold my own against, if she's down and out and you're not there? Firefly? Major Bludd? Storm Shadow?"

Snake had settled back on his heels, a signal that he had begun to follow Duke's line of reasoning; Firefly was insane, Major Bludd was a sociopath, but Storm Shadow especially was not a threat to be taken lightly, even by Snake himself. Still, he had asked for clarification. { _What do I know that Scarlett doesn't_?}

Duke had stared at the inscrutable visor for a moment, then turned his face away with a sigh. "Fear."

Snake's head had tilted; fear was not something he was often accused of.

"Scarlett doesn't know the fear of losing her, because she's not me," Duke had explained. "She can't. But you do."

After a moment, Snake Eyes had nodded, slowly. Of course he understood that, better than anyone save Duke himself.

"I can't fail her," Duke had said quietly. "Please."

Snake Eyes had nodded, almost more to himself than in agreement with Duke. { _It will be difficult,_ } he warned. { _If you want my assurance that you will be able to stand against my sword brother, I will treat you like a sword brother. You will be exhausted. You will hurt. You will bleed._ }

"Better me now," Duke had said firmly, "than her later. If I can't hack it, we'll know, and if that's true she deserves better."

With another thoughtful nod, Snake Eyes had signed something that Duke had taken to heart during their training sessions, which would soon prove just as hellish as Snake had warned they would be. { _Good man_.}

"We'll see," Duke had said wryly, and they had shaken on it.

Snake Eyes had not been mincing words—he had not gone easy on Duke, not even at the beginning. Duke had bruised; he had bled; he had collapsed into bed sore and aching some nights with only the comfort of Scarlett's clever hands soothing his tormented muscles with calming rubdowns and analgesic ointment. She had known Duke and Snake had been putting in extra training, but not why. The first time he'd winced in pain beneath her caresses and she'd opened his shirt to discover the bruises he was wreathed in, she'd almost stormed off that very minute to confront Snake in her nightgown. The only thing that had stopped her was Duke's forceful veto of this course of action, telling her they were only bruises and would heal, that it was just the price of practice.

Scarlett had tilted her head and smiled at this, and he'd asked her what she was thinking; she had told him that he had sounded as though he were studying with her father.

"I'll never be that good," he'd laughed softly, "but I'll be good enough for you to count on, and that's all I want. Don't worry about me."

The look of pride in her eyes had been worth every bruise, every cut, and she had indulged him in a massage so thorough and relaxing that he had fallen asleep before they had even made love, waking the next morning with his head pillowed on her breast, listening to the steady beat of her heart.

* * *

He'd meant what he'd said—he would never be as good or as agile as Scarlett in the art, and it was the generally accepted opinion that no one had a hope in hell of reaching Snake Eyes' lofty skill. But while he would always fear a time in which she was downed and all that stood between her and death was him, he no longer felt ill-equipped to shield her. Snake Eyes had shown his satisfaction with Duke's progress by fine-tuning the lessons when he felt there was an advantage Duke could capitalize on, such as his size or the sheer upper-body strength he'd spent his entire life cultivating. Duke would always be more of a boxer than a martial artist, but the fact that Snake Eyes was acknowledging and allowing for that instead of simply saying their training could go no further was a seal of approval Duke was absurdly proud of.

Which was why when Snake began the day's session by immediately sending his sparring partner through the rack of pugil sticks, toppling both him and it, Duke was utterly confused.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" Duke spat, regaining his feet and feeling the familiar flare of jealousy that he couldn't do so with the liquid twist of spine that Snake and Scarlett could employ, prone one minute and standing the next with an impressive flex of core muscle.

{ _Ask yourself that!_ } Snake Eyes signed condescendingly. { _White belt technique!_ }

He did this a lot—mentioning ranks and belts as though Duke were a slow learner in a McDojo who had watched too many action movies and had taken a fancy to overpronouncing words like "karate". Normally, Duke knew this was just to put a burr under his saddle, fire him up, and tried not to jump for the bait. However, he also knew that Snake wasn't kidding—the attack had been a front kick, something a toddler could learn in a moment and a master could hone into a match-ending strike over years.

"I don't care if it's the seventh step to the sun," Duke said. "That was a cheap shot."

Snake's answer was to drop into a back stance and taunt him with another one of those Hollywood-movie cliches—he beckoned crisply, _come at me_.

Duke wasn't quite foolish enough to try a frontal assault after he'd been drilled that hard with a beginner's technique, but he had learned well to press his advantages—his backfist would have probably rendered Snake unconscious if it had connected. Of course, Snake had seen everything twice, it seemed, and dodged the blow as if he had all the time in the world to see it coming, driving a fist—his left one, his less dominant hand; he was playing at this, even now—into Duke's ribs and knocking his air out.

Duke would reflect later that it was outrage and nothing else that prompted him to show off—to prove that he had been taking this as seriously as Snake was _not_ taking their current match. He had spent a long time feeling like a clumsy robot trying to execute the hook kick that Scarlett made look like the casting of a magic spell, and he would never call his own technique graceful—simply serviceable—but he knew at least that when he could hit, he could hit hard.

Snake dropped straight down out of range as though he were made of smoke, and Duke had no chance to intercept him before he kicked the master sergeant's standing leg out from under him. There was a terrible sense of being weightless, and then gravity took hold of him and pulled him greedily down to the sand.

Panting, Duke turned his head, cheek scraping the grit he lay on, to see Snake orbiting him idly, expectantly, arms crossed as though he were a young child's patient sensei. "You gonna explain this to me?" Duke demanded. "I thought we were making progress."

{ _We are._ _ **You**_ _are,_ } Snake signed, surprising him. { _Nice hook kick_. _Needs work, but you have the idea._ }

"I have _no_ idea," Duke countered, getting to his feet. "I have no idea why all of a sudden you're acting like you have to put the fear of God into me. I'm not asking you to go easy on me—I never have—but this is ridiculous. What's your endgame here?"

Snake's head tilted and Duke got the odd feeling he was pleased—that he felt he had been asked the right question. { _My master had a technique called 'the ear that sees'. It was an exercise meant to teach adaptation—to recognize one's opponent and combat accordingly._ }

"OK," Duke hazarded, sensing there was more to this.

There was. { _I haven't been teaching you to fight, Duke. You know how to fight. I have been teaching you to adapt. You expressed fear that you might not be able to combat an enemy like Storm Shadow, and so I have done what I can to ready you for that potential confrontation—and you have done well, although you'll forgive me if I hope it never happens._ }

Despite his efforts, Duke didn't think he'd be winning any title matches against Storm Shadow should they have occasion to battle one-on-one, in this life or any other, so he took both the point and the compliment at face value. "So why the cheap shots?"

Snake's posture belied amusement. { _Do you think my sword brother is the only opponent you should prepare for_?}

Duke frowned. "No, but I think there are other ways to handle characters like Bludd and Destro, if you ask me. A hook kick won't impress guys who shoot first and ask questions later."

Snake snapped to attention at the word "impress". { _You're starting to get it._ }

Duke shook his head. "I'm not. Can we stop playing guessing games?"

{ _You asked me to become your opponent,_ } Snake insisted. [ _That's what I'm doing, and so far I'm beating you. You can do better._ } With a sly tilt of the head and an almost insolent turn of the hands, he added, { _Maybe I think_ _ **she**_ _can do better._ }

Duke flushed, teeth gritting reflexively at this jab. Of all the cheap shots Snake Eyes had pulled on him in the last ten minutes, this was by far the worst, and he had to fight not to simply abandon the grace of the art and cold-cock his friend with his huge, dependable fist. "Secure that shit."

The sign was sneeringly condescending, even in its silence. { _Make me_.}

That did it. Not every technique in martial arts required the grace that Duke felt was beyond him, and he struck now with one of his favorites—a double punch at face level. When he could connect with this (and he had; even Snake had had to shake his hand that day, and it had become a favorite fallback in hand-to-hand combat while in the field) the opponent unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end was likely to spend the evening in the emergency room telling a triage nurse a confused, vague story about the hammer of Thor.

Snake Eyes wasn't about to be faked out today, though; in an incredibly risky maneuver, he simply thrust his own forearms up between Duke's fists and drove them apart, sending the master sergeant off-balance for a second, arms wide, before Snake's iron left palm struck him in the solar plexus. For the second time in ten minutes, Duke lost his breath.

Snake was just suddenly out of reach again, signing in that maddeningly rapid manner, skilled at that as he was at everything else. { _Too slow! You can't even keep up with me, what makes you think you can keep up with her?_ }

Duke sidestepped, tried a knife strike to the side of the visor, hoping to smash it against the sensitive cup of the ear, but Snake twisted like oil beneath his arm, the heel of his left hand colliding with Duke's nose. Duke's head snapped back as blood began to flow; his heart was hammering, mind racing.

Had Snake Eyes just been building up to this all along? Had all the handshakes and claps on the back been phony set-dressing for this confrontation? Had he just been amusing himself until the day he decided to tell Duke how he really felt about Scarlett's choice?

The signs were exaggerated now, the movements comical with an emotion Duke recognized—scorn. { _Not good enough. Not good enough for Shana_!}

The dam broke, and Duke pushed off the sand with his back foot, prepared to grapple—enough with the dodging and footwork, he would wrestle his Jekyll-and-Hyde comrade to the ground if he had to in order to get to the truth of this. Snake Eyes was the more skilled fighter, but Duke outweighed him by a few pounds of muscle and he intended to press that advantage now.

Of course, Snake Eyes had been anticipating this, and let gravity embrace him, using Duke's own momentum to roll the master sergeant to the ground. Duke knew even before the pain signal raced up his nerves like an electrical current on the way to shock his brain that he was caught in an armlock, and with Snake administering it, the question wasn't whether or not he would end up in sick bay but whether or not he would end up needing surgery.

The pain was immediate, a burning wire twisting in his arm, and Duke wondered again if this is where Snake Eyes had intended them to end up all along, lulling him into a false sense of trust before going for the jugular like this. His mind went, as always in times of stress, to Scarlett—how this would hurt her, her dearest friend having harbored this venom against Duke for so long, because of her; how she would be so disappointed in her heart's brother for this...

A spark flared through the currents of pain arcing across his synapses, and as Duke acknowledged it, memories made it pulse brighter and brighter.

 _Do you think my sword brother is the only opponent you must prepare for?_

 _ **With my life...with my heart.**_

" _The ear that sees_ _"_ _...I have been teaching you to adapt._

 _ **They just...worry.**_

 _You asked me to become your opponent. That's what I'm doing._

 _ **They're proud of me.**_

 _If you want to stand against my sword brother, I will treat you like my sword brother._

 _ **Of course they are.**_

"Brother," Duke panted, understanding making the spark in his mind flare like a star. "Cheap shots—grandstanding—like an overprotective brother. Not yours— _hers_!"

Just like that, Snake Eyes let go of his arm.

It was like standing next to a loud stereo and then turning it off. His nerves throbbed dully with an echo of the pain, but the pressure on his arm was gone as if it had never been. Snake Eyes had already gotten to his feet, but Duke took his time, blood still dripping heavily from his nose to tattoo the sand in the pit.

Snake Eyes was standing out of striking distance, looking as relaxed as if he had just awoken from a long nap, and Duke saw the shake of shoulders that always accompanied the commando's silent laughter. Slowly, Snake began to applaud.

"You bastard," Duke wheezed. "You _unbelievable_ bastard. Seriously, go to hell."

This only made Snake laugh harder, and Duke could feel the vibrations of his mirth as he clasped the hand the commando offered him and shook. Walking over to where they had left their gear, Snake pawed idly through Duke's rucksack before coming up with a handkerchief, which he handed to the master sergeant.

"You are such an incredible shit," Duke groused, accepting the handkerchief and pressing it to his bleeding nose. "You enjoyed that, you son of a bitch."

Snake Eyes nodded, holding up a hand with his thumb and forefinger spaced minutely apart. { _A little_.}

"You enjoyed it a _lot_ ," Duke protested, tilting his head back.

The hand on his shoulder was the brotherly touch he remembered, and it almost seemed like he'd imagined the caustic signs the commando had baited him with. { _Not because I believed what I was saying. On my honor._ }

"I believe you," Duke said quietly, and meant it. "But you had me going there for a minute."

Snake snorted, an expulsion of air through his nose that was his version of a chuckle. { _Well, yes. I am quite good._ }

Duke had to laugh at that, but Snake stilled, and waited until he had Duke's full attention before continuing.

{ _If you truly intend to go through with what you have planned, they will say worse. Maybe do worse._ }

Duke nodded, jaw setting; he had thought as much himself.

Snake Eyes held up an index finger before signing, an indication to mark his words carefully. { _It won't be because you are you, or because you are a soldier, and believe this—_ _i_ _t will_ _ **not**_ _be because you are not good enough. But in their eyes, no one will be good enough; you must be ready for that._ }

"You know more about them than I do," Duke said. "What do you think my odds are for their approval?"

Snake Eyes settled his weight on his back foot, a sign that he was thoughtfully considering the question. He answered with a question of his own: { _How much does their approval matter to you? Their permission? Think hard._ }

Duke did think hard. He knew Scarlett's mother had died when she was very young; the wound had never healed entirely, and she rarely talked about it or the lady herself, even with him. On the few occasions she had been brought to tears by a faint memory of the mother who hadn't been able to watch her grow into the amazing woman she had become, Duke had comforted her with talk of his own father, long dead, and his own sympathy for the scars motherless daughters and fatherless sons bore. He wasn't completely sure it had made her feel better, but had been surprised at the way talking had eased the pain in his own heart; he hoped Scarlett would eventually trust him enough to indulge in that balm someday.

He knew Scarlett's father had trained her in the martial arts, along with her three older brothers. No sisters, so the lack of feminine influence had carved grooves into the child Scarlett in ways that were apparent in her adulthood. She would joke about her brothers scaring off her dates when she had them, being overprotective of her—pushing her to strive for the best of everything because they knew she deserved only the best of everything, but with a lack of finesse that was only borne from the blindness of true love. Scarlett had not cracked under that pressure, but had not welcomed it either; Duke sometimes got the feeling that mixed with her fierce love for them was also a powerful resentment of them. They still wanted her to be what they had always thought she was, and somewhere along the way they had lost sight of who she _actually_ was. It was for this reason that they were uncomfortable with her choice to serve her country in its most elite special forces unit, instead of staying close to home and to family. This was a Shana they were unfamiliar with, that they could not put their thumb on, whom they worried they would lose in battle and violence. And her easy familiarity with war—oh, they were not comfortable with that at all.

And here he, Duke Hauser, would come; the walking, talking embodiment of this dangerous and unfamiliar life that their Shana now led, with her defloration in his eyes and her heart in his teeth, the wolf at the door, sniffing at their princess.

It didn't look good—not for their acceptance _or_ approval.

Closing his eyes, Duke banished these depressing thoughts by thinking of the photo in his suitcase once more, the foxtrot, her hand in his, shiny red curls and sparkling blue eyes.

 _ **I...I'm not that good at this...**_ Her laughter musical, even when it was nervous. _**Dancing...girl stuff. You know**_. Her face glowing peachy with shyness beneath the coral-colored blush Cover Girl had helped her dust over her cheekbones.

And his voice in response, strong and sure, just as he felt strong and sure about everything whenever her hand was in his. _I'll show you how._

There had been too many eyes on them for him to kiss her and so he hadn't, but there had been a kind of lovemaking in that impromptu dance lesson, her wrist spinning inside his hand like an axle inside a hub, her feet following his as if she was attuned to him somehow, and she was; he had felt, even as he'd had to let her go for the next few songs until it was appropriate to cut in on her again, that undeniable sense of having found the right partner, that they were meant to be this way, together.

Snake Eyes, patient as a canyon, had not moved or signed while Duke had been lost in these thoughts; he did not repeat his question, simply waited for Duke to be certain of his answer.

"It doesn't," he said finally. "It'd be nice to have their approval, but I can do without it; it isn't up to them. And as for permission, I haven't asked it of them and I never will. Not from her brothers and not from her father. Not even from you, Snake—and you're her heart's brother, if not her blood."

Snake Eyes' head tipped back slightly, almost imperceptibly—a sure sign that his blond brows were raised behind his mask. It was always as amusing to catch him by surprise as it was rare, but the subject was too serious for Duke to celebrate the victory.

"Not just because I don't need anyone's permission," Duke continued, his voice heated with the memory of his resentment at Scarlett's family's disapproval of her choices, "and neither does she, but because I'll be damned if anyone disrespects her by acting like she belongs to any of us. She belongs to herself. No matter what happens, now or ever, she belongs only to herself."

Snake Eyes regarded him for a long moment, then signed. { _That is the right answer. You don't need their permission; you have hers. And had you disrespected her as you correctly assumed you would have by asking_ _ **my**_ _permission, I would have had an answer for you._ }

Duke arched a blond, sand-splashed brow. "Oh yeah? What?"

The tilt of Snake's head was wry, amused; taking off his right glove, he revealed why he'd been favoring his left during their sparring. A knuckleduster gleamed across his fingers in the pale morning light.

Duke's teeth grit, throbbing at the idea that he could very well have lost a few of them. "What the _hell_?" Blinking incredulously at Snake Eyes, he realized the situation fully and frowned, brows meeting over his stormy eyes. "This _was_ a test. This was _your_ test. You _son_ of a _bitch_. How could you plan to use that on me?"

In the time that had passed since Scarlett had run into a fire and slept a sleep of a thousand dreams, bringing the three of them closer than they had ever been, Duke had become more and more accustomed to the shake of broad shoulders that accompanied the commando's silent laughter. He shook his head. { _I didn't. I knew I wouldn't need it_.} Clapping the master sergeant on the shoulder in the way Duke had come to expect, he signed, just as he had that first day, { _Good man_.}

"Go to hell," Duke declared, crossing his arms over his aching breastbone. Snake's shoulders shook even harder, and after a moment, Duke joined him in his laughter, shaking his own head.

After a moment of companionable silence, Duke cast a wary eye at the commando. "Would you really have hit me with a brass knuckle if I had asked you for your permission?"

He wasn't sure _how_ he could tell Snake Eyes was grinning behind the mask, but there was a glee to the way commando raised his fist, displaying the shine of the knuckleduster at Duke's eye level, then curled his thumb quickly against his hand. Duke winced as something hit him in the face—cold water. He uttered a wordless exclamation and wiped his eyes to see Snake displaying an open palm, offering the knuckleduster to Duke even as he showed him its secret—a reservoir and trigger, hidden when his fist had curled around it.

As Duke took the water pistol—because that was exactly what it was, coated in cheap metallic paint to look like steel, the spouts pinprick holes on each knuckle—he gave Snake an incredulous look.

The commando managed to look beatific as he signed, { _It's plastic._ }

"I hate you," Duke growled, drawing the toy up and depressing the trigger furiously, uncaring that Snake's visor kept his eyes safe from the squirt of water—it was still satisfying to see him flinch, that snorting expulsion of air trumpeting his amusement at his joke. And despite himself, Duke couldn't help but smile too.

An odd friendship, to be sure—but all the same, he treasured it.

* * *

It had been quite some time since General Hawk had sat in his office chair and made the decision to keep two of his best soldiers in his unit when all regulations dictated that he separate them at best, court-martial them at worst.

Part of it, of course, had been pure pettiness on his part—he was very aware that since the team's existence had been made public, Colonel Stoner of the Strategic Hazard Intervention Directorate was constantly trying to lure Scarlett away to work for him. Had she given in to this temptation, it would have mattered little whose bed she shared or when, and Hawk appreciated her loyalty, especially when a lateral move would have eliminated the need for the careful discretion she and Duke had been employing in their personal interactions. Similarly, he could think of at least half a dozen divisions salivating over the idea of having Duke at their helm, and Hawk had no intention of losing his field commander to someplace he'd be relegated to driving a desk and building forts out of paperwork in triplicate.

But a larger part of it was simply that the General was human, and he had been unable to sentence two of his best soldiers—two people he was incredibly fond of—to a misery that would have been as obvious as it would have been inevitable. He had felt for them; he had appreciated their efforts to continue to do their jobs in spite of their surrendering to things they had been unable to control or to fight, and he had felt they had deserved a chance. And so a chance he had given them.

He had never regretted this decision, largely because the soldiers in question had never given him cause to.

Oh, he had noticed the ever-increasing depth of it; at this late stage it was impossible not to, but for the most part they had continued to conduct themselves admirably, and once they had proven that they would continue their excellent standard of service despite general knowledge of their fraternization, it had become easier and easier to look the other way if he happened to see Duke cup a hand beneath Scarlett's elbow while walking with her somewhere, or the affectionate gazes that sometimes flashed between them. If their leave coincided (and it did not, always), he signed off on it all the same, sometimes chuckling to himself remembering his younger days. Conrad Hauser and Shana O'Hara loved their country and loved their team, and Hawk found he could not begrudge them their love of each other. They risked so much, sacrificed without a second thought; he could not deny them this one good thing in a lifetime of combat and service.

Which was why he was _not_ looking forward to what he was going to have to tell Duke, because he had a feeling he was going to be interrupting a long-planned and much-anticipated weekend pass. Hawk had not signed off on any leave for Scarlett, so he doubted his request would spoil a tryst, but it was something Duke had been set on all the same, and the serious-minded Master Sergeant's laserlike focus belied an importance to the trip that Hawk was unable to quantify.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Duke asked, standing at Hawk's office door, waiting to be granted permission to enter.

Hawk waved a hand. "I did. Have a seat, Duke. I would offer you coffee, but my coffee pot's been on the blink lately."

"Sorry to hear that," Duke chuckled. Coffee was a precious commodity around the Pit.

Hawk almost felt sorry for how swiftly Duke fell into the trap. "Yes, well, it's not the only thing that's breaking down around here. We seem to be down quite a few motorcycles."

"The motorcycles are not broken," Duke said calmly. "They had to be abandoned in the field and were not recovered."

Hawk almost chuckled at this matter-of-fact, professional description of the loss of the vehicles during a Cobra attack; Duke was well-versed in government Legaleese. "And the Skystrikers..."

"That's Armbruster," Duke barked, his calmness breaking—this was a sore subject with him. "And I'd have an easier time talking Deep Six into playing a game of Trivial Pursuit with Torpedo, Tunnel Rat and Cover Girl than I would getting Ace to play it safe every once in a while."

Hawk fought an urge to laugh, schooling his face into severe lines. "Never mind that, Duke. There is an appropriations meeting on the schedule for this weekend, and I'm hoping to be able to talk them into padding the equipment budget a little more. Surely they'll see it's worth it once they've heard how successful our last few ops have been due to the advantage given us by our gear, especially against an arms dealer of Destro's caliber..."

Duke realized too late where this was going. "Don't say it," he groaned.

"...of course, I could put that over much more effectively with the firsthand account of my field commander behind it."

"Don't say it," Duke repeated, a hand over his eyes as if that would stop the impending order.

"I'm sorry, son-"

"General," Duke attempted with a flat rattlesnake gaze. "I'd like to think I don't often request passes. I'd also like to think I've been a pretty damn good member of this unit, and have done my best to adhere to every order I've been issued, and performed my duties with the utmost professionalism and decorum."

"Are you done?" Hawk asked, not without some amusement.

After a beat, Duke muttered a curse. "I can't believe this."

"Look, Duke, do you want a new Mauler or not?"

"Of course I do, but—"

"And the Night Boomer? Scarlett practically melted into a puddle of estrogen at the thought of flying that Night Boomer." The general, not ignorant of Duke's Achilles heel or of Scarlett's fascination with the vehicles, raised a pointed brow over a twinkling eye. "We've been talking about roosting that baby here for months."

"Trust me, General, it's been on my list," Duke said dispiritedly. "Along with another thing I guess I'm not going to pick up this weekend."

Hawk sighed, feeling genuine sympathy for his second-in-command. "Like I said, I'm sorry, son. I know you were looking forward to this pass, but I really need you on hand for this. I may sign on the dotted lines, but it's you who gets the troops fired up—and that includes the bureaucrats. One good speech from you and they're practically ready to take up arms themselves until they come to their pampered, sheltered senses and hand the shiny new toys off to you and the Joes while they stand and cheer from the safety of their offices."

"Yes, sir." Duke's face was as blank as a refrigerator door—which was a sure sign that he wanted to scowl. Cheekily, he added, "This had better be the _best_ appropriations meeting I've ever been to."

Hawk chuckled and decided to throw his field commander a bone for not digging his heels in too hard. "Cheer up, son. It won't be as fun as drinking a beer on your front porch, but tell you what—when we get back, you can have the entire evening. I'll even get Machine to take Scarlett off the roster for the night. Deal?"

A smile threatened the master sergeant's stern face—it didn't quite reach his mouth, but his frosty eyes lightened with a telltale spark; he was clearly imagining Scarlett's delight not just with his unexpected presence, but with an entire evening to do as they liked in. "Can't turn down an offer like that," he acquiesced, and added pointedly, "Thank you, sir."

Hawk snorted, never ceasing to marvel at how he'd mellowed leading this eclectically informal team—and how little he regretted that change in disposition. "You're a easy haggle, Duke. I wish the damn budgeting committee was as easy to bribe."

Duke gave in and laughed aloud.

* * *

Brett Glieson knew the field of tangled weeds in Queens well; as a child, he had remembered adults sometimes taking their junked cars to its borders and setting them on fire for the insurance money. The place stretched underneath a mile-long bridge over the bay, sloping down towards a thin strip of beach, its sand dotted with mussel shells. The smell of low tide hung in the air; the sun would not be up for maybe another fifteen minutes.

"Well?" he asked, shifting his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything, but I have to get to work soon and it's going to take me a hell of a lot longer on the Long Island Expressway."

The dark woman—it only occurred to him then that he had never learned her name; he'd been too focused on the weekly deposits in his account to ask questions—looked as though she wouldn't have cared if he'd stood there and hurled insults and obscenities at her. She seemed to float above the weeds in a long black coat, heedless of her black boots sinking into the marshy ground; her eyes were only for the dot-matrix printout he had given her. She ran her fingers across a section of it; Brett didn't have to see it to know it she was touching the name, the name he had been watching for all these weeks and had finally found yesterday evening.

"Yes," she said, in a hushed, almost awed whisper. "Yes. It's time. It's finally time."

"Ok. Great!" Brett said nervously, hoping to speed things along. "So...are we done here?"

She didn't look up, her eyes fixed on the printed name, as if she had gotten just what she had wanted for her birthday, what she _had_ to have for her birthday, and she still wasn't sure she believed that her dream had come true. She spoke distractedly, dismissively. "Oh, yes, Mr. Glieson. Our business is concluded."

"Huh?" Brett blurted out without thinking. "Wait a minute! You said you'd help me out of my debt. You said you'd settle up!"

She blinked those shining black eyes as if she had forgotten all about it, and for a moment he worried he'd gone too far, and the scaly, greasy evil that he had seen in her that night in the alley beside the Rabbit's Foot might peek out from behind those eyes. Then she laughed, the equivalent of smog forming a rainbow, and beamed at him.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Glieson, and I thank you for the kind reminder. It _would_ be thoughtless of me not to settle your affairs, wouldn't it?"

"You promised...you'd free me of my debt..." Her choice of words was unnerving, the slip of her hand into her coat more so, but in the end it was the dark woman's smile that told Brett Glieson everything he should have realized from the start.

"Too right, Mr. Glieson. I hope thirty pieces of silver will be enough," she quipped idly.

He gave her his back as he tried to run, a mistake; no one who lived beyond the tangled, swampy field heard anything through the silencer she had screwed onto the barrel of the gun she wore beneath the long coat. Brett Glieson died facedown with wet sand oozing baywater beneath his weight, his last thoughts of California, the trauma from the bullet at the base of his skull triggering an olfactory hallucination of the phantom smell of sunscreen before his eyes went sightless for good.

"Did I say silver?" the dark woman asked the corpse cutely, tucking her weapon back into the holster she wore beneath her coat, the precious printout going into her blouse itself, next to the skin fluttering with the pulse of her rapidly beating heart. "I meant lead. Pleasant dreams, Mr. Glieson—your debt is cancelled."

A gull cried from the bridge's guardrail, wheeling off over the bay with a flap of wings as the sun shook out its first glitter on the edge of the water.

* * *

It was the word Vincent Falcone hated most to say to his older brother, but there were no two ways around it this time.

"No," he said, and an uncharacteristic look of surprise crossed Duke's face. Still, Falcon stood his ground: "Not just no. Hell no."

"Why the hell not?" Duke said, something swimming just under the surprise in his face like a shark in dark water—hurt? "Don't you want to take leave? You haven't in a while. All you've got to do is bring back what I asked for, and the rest of the time you can relax. What's the problem?"

"It's not the leave that bothers me, and you know it," Falcon said, pointing an accusing finger at his brother. "You know goddamn well that I am against this, and it's not fair of you to ask. I'm not dumb enough to think I can stop you from making a mistake, but I'll be damned if I'm going to help you along."

Sharp as a fin, the hurt broke the surface of the dark blue ocean in Duke's eyes. "You've said as much in the past, but I must be too stupid to see what your problem is, because I have no idea."

Falcon grunted, thinking the problem was quite obvious, but Duke was already upset and he didn't want to douse the fire with gasoline. He kept his voice low, with the self-consciousness of a man who considered himself a very tough guy giving voice to his feelings. "You're my brother, and I love you. I think there's more out there for you. I've told you that before. The world's your oyster, Duke—you can have anything you want."

"And _I've_ told _you_ before that I have all that I want," Duke said, his disappointment evident in his tone. His voice was also low, because they were in a public corridor and there was always a chance of being overheard, but it was also rough with feeling-he would have his say on this. "And if you can't see that—if you think the best thing that's ever happened to me is a 'mistake'—then maybe you don't love me as well as you thought." Their gazes dueled for a moment before Duke decided to cut his losses. Sighing, he turned to leave. "I guess that's that. If you won't help me, I'll find another way."

Falcon immediately cursed himself for putting that look on his older brother's face. "Duke. Wait," he said, reaching for the other man's shoulder.

Duke shrugged him off. "I think you've made your point. Forget I asked. Carry on." It was no longer the voice of his brother, but the voice of his field commander; Duke was hurt, and he was closing himself off as was his way, his longer stride taking him quickly out of reach.

"Jesus, will you _slow down_ ," Falcon barked, hating how chasing after Duke made him feel like a puppy, even after all these years. "Duke, please. Let's have this over."

"This isn't _going_ to be over." Duke whirled on him, a storm about to break in his expression. "My mind's made up, Vince. It would mean the world to me to have your blessing on this—but I can do without it."

It was the worst threat; Vincent Falcone had idolized his half-brother from childhood, and to disappoint him was like receiving a rebuke from God. All Falcon had ever wanted to be when he grew up was Duke. Duke had always excelled at school, at sports; he'd always known what to say to girls, had plenty of friends, and no one in town had seemed to have a bad word to say about him. He was one of the few people on earth whose good opinion Falcon valued—no, _needed—_ and he'd gone immediately for the jugular with this dismissal.

He remembered well the day they'd received the news that Duke had been killed in action. His mother had come to him, eyes dry but face gray, and he had known something bad—the _worst_ —had happened even before she'd said _We have to be very brave now, Vincent._ Not long after it had become official—and thus he'd had to face the reality of it—Falcon had spent a hard night drinking his father's whiskey in his half-brother's room, surrounded by Duke's trophies and pennants and the spare change he'd left on the bureau the last time he'd been home, sprawled out on Duke's bed as the room had spun and the memories had threatened to drive him mad. Upon eventually finding out that Duke was in fact alive and leading the world's most elite special forces team—hence the security reason for his fabricated "death"—Falcon had been prepared simply to be grateful for the gift of his brother's "resurrection". He'd never even dreamed that he'd have a chance to serve alongside his hero, but here he was, with his _own_ place on that same elite team.

And now they were arguing because Duke was about to _ruin everything_ , goddamn it.

Still...

Falcon remembered that night—that hazy, alcohol-addled night, the scent of his brother's aftershave making his head pound, the sound of his mother crying down the hall, his father's bass voice murmuring comfort. In the dark, he'd realized he was crying himself, lips moving in soundless pleas to a god that seemed distant and uncaring. _Take it back, please take it back not Conrad not him I'll do anything I won't argue with him anymore I'll be so good I'll give him anything he asks for I won't fight with him I won't be any trouble you can take me instead just take it back just bring him home just_ _ **bring him home I'll do anything**_ _—_

Somehow, some way, his prayers had been answered; Conrad was standing here before him right now, whole and alive. He'd gotten his brother back—and not for the last time; he still shuddered remembering his clumsy introduction to the Joe team, the battle against Serpentor, his brother's khaki shirt bright with blood as the spear meant for Falcon had struck home.

And Scarlett had _screamed_ —

Falcon shut his eyes tight as the memory of that scream—a sound of heartbreak, of unbearable pain—echoed in his mind. He'd felt she'd screamed for all of them, and he would never forget that awful sound.

Somehow, like a miracle, something in the makeup of the universe had shifted, had called _Lazarus come forth_ , and Conrad had—against all odds—pulled through an injury that should have been fatal and recovered, larger than life and stronger than ever. Doc had said on more than one occasion that his brother was no ordinary man, and Falcon believed that with all his heart.

"Vince?"

He came back to himself, opening his eyes to see Duke standing there, the anger in his eyes blunted by concern.

"You all right?"

He wasn't; his feelings were a sweet and sour ache in his throat—worry and resentment and wonder and anger and most of all the old destroyer, love. He'd promised to do anything, give anything, be anything to have his brother back, and he found he could not refuse him now, even as he lamented the favor he was being asked. He swallowed hard, blinking away the memories as best he could. "I can't give you my blessing, Duke. But I'll bring back your goddamned pocket watch."

"It's a _compass_ ," Duke said carefully, anger dueling with gratitude in his expression, "and it's _important_ , Vincent. If you're not going to take this seriously, better not to do it at all."

"Hey! Have I ever let you down before?" Falcon demanded automatically, even with the memories of his careless actions leading up to Duke's injury still fresh. Flushing with embarrassment as he realized his credibility was in jeopardy, he amended, "I'll get it! I'll get it. Calm down."

Duke nodded, blue eyes lightening with relief. He held out his hand for Falcon to shake. "Thank you. Brother—thank you."

Falcon shook the offered hand idly. "Yeah, yeah. You owe me for this, Duke, you really do."

"I know, and the next time you ask me to do something I'm not crazy about, I'll do it without complaint. Now listen," Duke said, and Falcon grimaced at the realization that this uncomfortable conversation was not yet over. "This is very important..."

* * *

Falcon wasn't kidding himself— _nothing_ about being a part of the G.I. Joe team made sense to him except the bottom-line equation of _freedom good, terrorism bad_. The vehicles seemed about as safe as the state-fair carnival rides that could be broken down in the morning and moved to another county by the time twilight fell over the midway. The ranks were an infographic to nowhere. And the dress code—tired of being confused by the seeming fashion faux-pas arms race between some of the members of the unit as to whose ridiculous getup was weighed down with the most nonsense like they were all employees at a T.G.I. Friday's, Falcon had given up the struggle long ago and stuck with his BDUs.

But no riddle was more unsolvable than Shana "Scarlett" O'Hara—or, to be more specific, with his brother Duke's deep, unwavering devotion to a woman whom Falcon could only helplessly classify as "low-level succubus". Even he felt that he was only so generous because the woman's one saving grace was that God had seemingly in his infinite sense of humor given her a face that could have launched a thousand Skystrikers.

There was no denying that Scarlett was beautiful, but even that didn't sit well with Falcon, who was often treated to the rather unpleasant sight of someone he felt should have been posing for magazine shoots mauling her way through a battalion of Cobra troopers. Spiking them gleefully on her crossbow bolts made him ill enough, but it was worse when she displayed her formidable skill at hand-to-hand combat. There was no doubt she enjoyed a good fight, her wild blue eyes blazing as she mentally ticked off her mission parameters. Most chillingly of all, she never stopped role-playing a friendly sniper, rough and ready, unfazed by the blood on her hands and the sweat on her brow. Under other circumstances (those circumstances likely being that she were a man), that would have made the Cobra generals screaming for her head that much funnier to Falcon. But while she regularly bucked orders to withdraw while other Joes were still on the battlefield—Scarlett left no Joe behind if there was even a ghost of a chance she could aid them—she was also strategic to the point of ruthlessness. Falcon had no doubt she had it in her to torch an entire building if it would rid the structure of rats.

In fairness, Scarlett was not the only woman on the Joe team, nor was she the only woman able or willing to fight dirty on the battlefield. Lady Jaye was known for bulling right through whatever was in front of her to complete her objective, whether the odds were in her favor or not. Cover Girl had, along a mouth that would make a sailor feel the need to call his mother, a downright sadistic streak when it came to crushing Cobras under the treads of her beloved Wolverine.

But Cover Girl and Lady Jaye didn't spend their down time in his brother's arms. In his brother's bed.

And for a thousand reasons and _no_ reason, Falcon had never been comfortable with the idea of it. The pretty smile Scarlett flashed the soldiers as she walked past seemed to him to have fangs. He had seen those hands candy-coated with enemy blood or the thick, syrupy oil of a B.A.T. and shuddered at the idea of her touching his brother with affection, when everyone knew those hands were weapons. He had no idea _how_ she had managed to weasel her way past the frat regulations that strictly forbid a romantic relationship between her and Duke, and Falcon sometimes had trouble quelling his annoyance that General Hawk had not done more to protect Duke from Scarlett in that respect. Falcon was of the mind that Duke should have been home on leave with local farmer's daughters lining up simply to stand in his wake—that was the Duke he remembered from high school, the hometown hero—and Scarlett should have been in a court-martial getting her career shoved up her ass. Yet she commanded respect everywhere she went, and as for Duke...

...well, in the brief moments when he believed no one was observing him, Duke looked at Scarlett like she was the whole world, and it was a fun, exciting, adventurous world. Falcon couldn't understand how the acid-tongued siren he could barely tolerate could put that look on his older brother's face. He was sure it wasn't just sex—no one was that good in bed, and this was _Duke_ , who Falcon had learned at an early age could have any woman he wanted simply by crooking his finger at her. _What_ did he, Falcon, not see in Scarlett? How had he miraculously escaped falling under her spell?

"Falcon!"

His inner monologue was interrupted by the harpy herself, stalking up to him with blue eyes blazing like the bottom of a gas flame.

He frowned. "Yes?"

Scarlett folded her arms, which did wondrous things to cradle her breasts, so Falcon kept his gaze studiously on her stormy face, lest he turn to stone. "Care to tell me how _you_ somehow ended up with the leave Duke's been trying to get for a month?" she demanded hotly.

Falcon cursed inwardly. He knew Scarlett's specialty was intelligence, but he still couldn't believe she had caught wind of his taking Duke's leave so _fast._ That was another thing that had taken him a long time to get used to—the Joes were like rabbits in a warren; good at keeping secrets from the outside world but terrible at keeping secrets from each other. For all he knew, it was Duke himself who had told Scarlett, but Falcon was betting on Snake Eyes.

Scarlett was rather vocal about her dislike for Falcon, but for Snake Eyes, actions spoke louder than words. Seemingly from the beginning, the commando had had it out for him. It was common knowledge that new recruits were subjected to a battery of rather childish pranks upon their official minting as full-fledged Joes, but Falcon had gradually realized he was being treated as a special case. The jokes played on him went beyond friendly hazing—some of them had been downright mean. Cover Girl had sneaked a Denver boot out of the motor pool and had helped Snake Eyes boot the Jeep Falcon had signed out on a night he'd had a date, which he'd then shown up late to covered in grease. He had ended up wearing the third martini his date had ordered while waiting for him, watching her stalk off in a fury.

He'd once woken at reveille to find his drawers and closet zip-tied shut— _all_ of them—along with his boots. He'd gotten to P.T. late and had had to suffer the wrath of Beach Head, whose screaming public ass-chewings could blister skin and scorch the earth like the radioactive breath of Godzilla. They'd hidden a walkie-talkie in his bunk and kept him up a few nights with all sorts and conditions of horrible noises-from tiny kittenish meows that had him ripping his bedclothes apart to find the source of the noise, to unholy shrieks that jolted him out of peaceful slumber. He'd put on his fatigues once to find glitter in all of his pockets, which exploded out in puffs of rainbow shame every time he moved. This especially stung—Falcon considered himself a pretty tough guy, and shedding glitter everywhere he walked had _not_ contributed to his idealized image of himself.

Falcon had never been able to catch any of them in the act, but he had plenty of suspects. For some reason, he didn't think any of the jokes on him had been pulled by Scarlett—she seemed to loathe spending any time with him at all, even if that time were spent to make him feel uncomfortable. However, she hadn't been above watching him squirm, and he'd hated the queenly look of satisfaction in her jewel-blue eyes every time he'd been punked by one of the other Joes, almost as if they had done it by her design.

It wasn't so farfetched—he seemed to be the _only_ Joe who wasn't overly fond of Scarlett; he wouldn't have put it past any of the others to stage a vendetta against him in her name. Especially Snake Eyes, who seemed to take Falcon's dislike of Scarlett as personally as if it had been directed at him. During sparring, Snake seemed to hit Falcon harder, correct him more impatiently than any other Joe. Falcon was atrocious at sign language, but he knew what sarcasm looked like. The commando somehow made his gestures condescending whenever he was forced to communicate with Falcon; like Scarlett, Snake did his best to avoid interacting with him altogether.

Moreover, what had happened to Falcon in the showers had been the meanest, most embarrassing prank of all, and he'd known for _sure_ that was Snake. No one else would have had the skill or the chutzpah to pull it off without being caught.

Falcon was a creature of habit, and he tended to use the same shower stall upon release from the day's P.T., so he'd had put up with the usual pranks there as well-someone had once coated his bar of soap with clear nail polish so it would refuse to lather; Falcon's money was on Lady Jaye-but there had been a week-long lull in general, and he'd finally started to feel confident that he'd earned his jock strap and the rest of the Joes would lay off.

Until the water from his showerhead had started running red.

He'd screamed to beat the devil, staggering out of the showers into the corridor in a towel that had quickly stained red as he'd wrapped it around himself, only to be confronted by a number of his confused comrades. Just as he'd started a stammering, panicky explanation that the apocalypse had apparently started in his shower, a bit of the red liquid he was covered in had dripped into his mouth, and he'd tasted not blood, but the sugary sweetness of Kool-Aid.

Once again, the laughter had burned worse than the shot of a Cobra laser rifle, and his face had flamed as red as the fake "blood" he was covered in. Duke had given him a sympathetic look, but he knew his brother too well to miss the gleam of mirth in his blue eyes. Duke had been in command of the team long enough to know where a hazing prank fell on the bell curve, and regardless of its target, this one had been a honey.

Still, Duke had done his best to keep it professional. "All right, you lot, show's over," he'd called out in that commander's voice. "If you don't have anything to do, I'm sure I can come up with something, so you've got ten seconds to disperse if you don't want to test the limits of my creativity." The Joes had all hightailed it, not wanting to be slapped with one of their field commander's more inventive punishments-and Falcon knew for a fact he could come up with some hellish ones.

"You O.K., Falcon?" he'd asked, a little more gently, once they'd had relative privacy.

"I'm fine," Falcon had gritted out, and while that hadn't been strictly the truth, his next sentence was. "I'm just tired of eating all this _shit_ all the time."

"I'll talk to them," Duke had promised, but Falcon had shaken his head, sending red-tinged droplets flying from his dark hair.

It had been hard to look tough while dripping on the floor in nothing but a towel. "No. Thanks, Duke, but no. They'll think I can't hang. I'll be O.K."

Duke had nodded, clapping him on the shoulder. "Good man. Go get cleaned up." Thinking it over and shaking sticky water from the hand he'd touched Falcon with, a slight frisson of discomfort on his face, he'd added, "Pick a different shower stall this time. And try to relax. You've been under a lot of stress lately. Get some rest."

Falcon had nodded, feeling better-until Scarlett, who had remained as always at his brother's side, had fired her parting volley in a sweet voice that fell just short of disguising the warning _buzz_ of the queen bee.

"Yes, Falcon—how _have_ you been sleeping?"

"I hate you," Falcon had muttered to her, too low for Duke's ears, as he'd stalked past with as much dignity as a Kool-Aid-stained towel could afford him.

Oh, _how_ he hated her—how they hated each other.

And unfortunately for Falcon, hating her earned double the blowback for one low, low price—while his brother was simply hurt, disappointed and most of all confused by Falcon's animosity towards Scarlett, the redheaded demon's pet ninja was another story. Snake Eyes had apparently made it his personal mission to make Falcon's life a living hell for daring to despise his precious princess.

 _That_ was another thing that baffled Falcon—for someone who spent her days at Duke's side and her nights in his bed, Scarlett sure spent a lot of time with Snake Eyes. If Scarlett wasn't with Duke, the odds were better than even she could be found with her commando buddy. They sparred together at every opportunity, took meals often in the mess, and could be seen frequently walking or sitting in companionable silence, simply enjoying each other's company. It had made Falcon suspicious enough to confront Duke about it.

* * *

"I think there's something going on between Scarlett and Snake Eyes," he'd said one day when he'd gotten some time in Duke's office, hating himself for bringing up news that could potentially break his brother's heart but feeling too protective to let it slide any longer. But Duke hadn't yelled, hadn't looked concerned; he'd simply given him a long, searching look, and then he'd done the worst thing Falcon could imagine—he'd _laughed_ at him.

"I can see why you might think that, but there's nothing to worry about. You're too new here to understand," he'd said, waving the possibility away with one big hand, something Falcon had found downright infuriating. He'd come here purely out of concern for Duke, and Duke was laughing at him— _dismissing_ him.

Falcon had lost it. "Are you _blind_ , Duke? Or are you just too whipped to think your _darling_ might not be the perfect goddess you think she is?"

The endearment had dripped with sarcasm—Falcon had once overheard Duke, in a rare moment of softness, refer to Scarlett by this little-known pet name for her. It had sickened him to see his brother, the blond Apollo who had made the local girls swoon into ladylike faints simply by walking down the street, so wrapped around one woman's little finger. To say nothing of the fact that the finger in question belonged to a woman Falcon thought was a hot-tempered, cold-blooded vixen from hell. He had never intended to let Duke know that the depth of his affection for Scarlett had been overheard, even by him, but he hadn't been able to hold himself back this time.

In contrast to Scarlett, Duke had a better handle on his temper—oh, he was certainly prone to rages of his own, and tales of his bad moods had become legend around the Pit, but with the mantle of leadership of the most unconventional unit in military history had come a crash course in patience, and Duke had graduated from that with a longer-than-usual, slow-burning fuse. However, this crass mockery of his secret, heartfelt term of endearment for his beloved had caused Falcon to reach the end of it.

Duke's ice-blue eyes had narrowed to frozen slits, the laughter gone as if it had never been. His voice had tolled like a great, heavy bell of doom as he'd gritted out, "Secure that shit. Immediately."

Falcon had still been too green to stay mindful of the difference between talking to his brother and talking to his field commander. "Duke, you've got to listen to me—"

" _You_ listen, Falcone," Duke had growled, and his tone along with the divisive use of his surname had been enough to stall Falcon in his tracks. "And listen good, because I am only going to say this once, and then we are _never_ having this conversation again. Do you understand me?"

"Duke-"

" _Do_ you," Duke had repeated loudly, " _understand_ me?"

Thoroughly cowed by the look of cold rage on his brother's handsome face, Falcon had swallowed. "Yes, Duke."

Waiting a moment to be sure he wasn't going to pipe up again, Duke had continued in that gravelly tone of utter, quiet fury. "First of all, Snake Eyes and Scarlett have been in this unit from the beginning, and regardless of how you feel or I feel or anyone in this Pit feels, you _will_ treat them with the respect due them. I will tolerate absolutely no less. Is that understood?"

Falcon had nodded in defeat, his face burning with shame and rising anger.

"Can't hear you, Falcone."

" _Yes_ , Duke," he'd snarled in frustrated, abject humiliation.

"And furthermore," Duke had continued, his voice quieter but no less furious for its lowered volume, "Snake Eyes is my friend. He may not share my blood, but he's seen quite enough blood of his own in the time we've served together. Some of that blood has been mine, and some of it his. Snake Eyes will always guard a friend's back, not stab him in it. He and I have served together too long for me to _ever_ believe he'd do anything as dishonorable as what you're accusing him of, and you'd better hope to hell he never finds out you even _thought_ it, because if he does, you will be in for a world of hurt. And I can't say as I'd blame him."

Falcon's mouth had dropped open slightly—not at the description of Snake Eyes' wrath, _that_ was common knowledge around the Pit—at the fact that his brother was, in a roundabout sort of way, threatening him.

But Duke hadn't been finished. "And _Scarlett_ ," he had continued, managing to imbue the name of his beloved with the awe and majesty usually reserved for faerie queens or rare, endangered animals, "would _never_ hurt me. I know that beyond all shadow of doubt. I don't expect you to understand our partnership, or what we've been through, but how _dare_ you stand here, so new you're shiny, so clean that you _squeak_ —"

His voice had thickened with anger and he'd checked himself, hesitating until he'd leashed his rage enough to continue. "How _dare_ you stand here in judgment of my team—of my _friends—_ of..." He'd trailed off, but still Falcon heard the words he'd left unsaid.

 _Of my darling._

Tiredly, as if a light had shut off inside him, Duke had simply concluded, "I'm so disappointed in you, Vince. I can't remember a time I was more disappointed in you than I am right now."

Oh, that had hurt. That had really hurt.

"Dismissed," Duke had said, with the heavy, autocratic air of the G.I. Joe field commander, a tone that would brook no further argument. Falcon had departed in an uncomfortable hurry, only hating Scarlett more for driving this wedge between him and the brother he'd been so grateful to have back.

* * *

The memories still smarted—Falcon was very proud, and he hated being dismissed, hated being treated like a child. And yet it was that exact bullheaded, childish pride that stopped him from telling Duke the biggest reason he was always locking horns with Scarlett—quite simply, that she had been the one who'd started it.

Falcon didn't know why, but _Scarlett_ didn't like _him_. She had _never_ liked him, not from the very first. The eyes that were blue as a springtime sky for the other Joes held only steel when they rested on him, and her voice was clipped and flat whenever she spoke to him. If she wasn't outright arguing with him, she treated him as though he were a waste of time, as though his appointment to the team had been a mistake. She had never given him any insight as to _why_ she despised him so much, but Falcon knew hatred when its cold blue eyes flickered over him. He'd never had a chance with her, so he'd immediately gone on the defensive, and that had set the tone for their entire working relationship.

And nothing had changed, he realized. Another day, another instance of Scarlett tearing into him for whatever she could think of, world without end, amen.

"Well?" Scarlett asked, looking as immovable as a sentinel despite him having six inches and seventy pounds on her. "Why would _you_ get the leave instead of Duke?"

This was the classic rock and a hard place. Hawk had needed Duke to handle something at the last minute, but the cancelled errand had been of the utmost importance, and Duke had begged Falcon to go in his place and complete it in his stead. Though he'd bristled at exactly _what_ he'd been asked to do (he'd rather have given the compass Duke wanted him to fetch to an undisguised Zarana before acquiescing to Duke's intentions for it), he'd agreed. Baby Brother to the rescue. He'd earned Duke's profuse thanks—and a strict warning that Scarlett could _not_ find out what the errand was, under penalty of being Snake Eyes' "demonstrator" in his martial arts sessions for a month (When Falcon had blustered that Snake Eyes would never have agreed to such a condition, Duke retorted that it had in fact been Snake's idea. Much to Falcon's chagrin, this meant that Snake Eyes knew about the compass, which only served to strengthen Duke's argument that his friend would not betray him with Scarlett).

He really wanted to get the irate redhead off his back by telling her that Duke had _asked_ him to go in his place, but even that would have been baiting her curiosity, and he couldn't risk it getting back to Duke—even in practice, Snake hit really hard. Plus, there was the little-boy mentality that Duke had trusted him with something important; he couldn't let Big Brother down.

"What do you care?" he asked flippantly. "I figure _you'd_ be happy he's sticking around."

Rather than angry, Scarlett looked upset, and Falcon had to steel himself against the softening of her expression. He didn't want to admit that, despite his misgivings, it was very obvious that Scarlett took on his brother's troubles as if they were her own. "It's just that he was so looking forward to it. He's not had a break in so long. How could you do this to him?"

"It's not _my_ fault he can't take leave," Falcon burst out, hating her intensely for trying to force-feed him a guilt trip and deciding to use his anger to divert her from the issue. "Why don't you go complain to Hawk? Or better yet, Cobra Commander? Maybe he'll reschedule his attack so Duke can get a bit of shut-eye in the hammock in our backyard. Why don't you wink those big eyes at him and flash a little of that Irish glitter? I'm sure he'll reconsider."

It worked; Scarlett visibly hit flashpoint. Falcon watched her claw her hands, he was sure, to keep from shoving him in her frustration. "Enjoy your leave, mama's boy. I hope you fall out of that hammock!"

"I'll send you a postcard, firecrotch," he called tauntingly as she stalked off in a rage. "With love from St. Louis!"

Scarlett yelled something even more obscene from down the corridor, and Falcon breathed a sigh of relief. Crisis averted—for now—and he had the added bonus of not having to see the maniac redhead for a few days. As long as he didn't think too hard about _why_ he was taking the leave, it would almost feel like a real vacation.

Almost.

* * *

Still, Falcon reflected hours later as he pressed his boot down onto the gas pedal of his rented Camry and hustled it a little faster down the highway, it was nice to be home. He reasoned that the earlier flight Machine had been able to score him when she'd transferred Duke's unusable ticket to him coupled with the time difference between Staten Island and St. Louis meant he might even have time to stop off in town and have a brew or two—his parents weren't expecting him till later, there was always a chance he might run into an old friend or two, and it would be nice to relax and have a cold one without worrying someone would walk by and tap the top of his beer with the bottom of theirs, making half of it erupt out the neck in a gout of foam and rendering the rest flat.

Joseph H. Colton on sale, if he had a dollar—and a fresh beer—for every time Clutch had done that.

He was just deciding whether to go to Bridie's or to Peggy O'Neill's when a much more attractive opportunity presented itself.

Literally—she was so far under the hood that her feet were off the ground and a decidedly nice backside was in the air, barely covered by denim cutoffs. Falcon figured it would be too cold for clothes like that in about a week, but Indian summer was still here, and he mentally blessed Duke for picking this weekend to get and then lose his leave.

The car was a horrorshow—an old Bonneville with cancer spots of rust in its sides and across its dented hood. The paint had been white once, but it was starting to peel and pink with age, and had been filthy long before she'd pulled it over to the side of the highway.

It was late; there were no other cars on the road, so Falcon didn't see the harm in pulling over to a stop beside the breakdown lane.

"Need some help?" he called, rolling down the Camry's window.

The girl jumped, almost hitting her head on the upraised hood of the car in her surprise. "My goodness!" she exclaimed in a soft, pretty voice. The expression on her face threw Falcon off for a second—there was something layered underneath her surprise at being hailed by another motorist while she was distracted. In fact, it was almost as though she had been expecting someone to stop...

...but _hadn't_ been expecting to see Vincent Falcone behind the wheel.

She shook herself and giggled, placing a hand on her modest but beautifully shaped breasts as if she were clutching at pearls. "I'm sorry," she gasped. "You gave me a start!"

Falcon immediately discounted his suspicious thoughts. She was young and pretty, and her car had broken down, stranding her alone on the side of the highway at night. Of course she would be wary of a stranger, even one offering to help her. He gave her his best grin, the one that had charmed quite a few girls into the backseat of his hand-me-down Nova back in the day. "Sorry about that, ma'am. Are you OK?"

She smiled ruefully, wiping grease across her pale cream-colored peasant blouse. "It keeps overheating! Every time I try to get any further it starts belching smoke and I'm just terrified. My father always said the thing was going to explode some day, I just didn't think he meant with me _in it_!"

Falcon laughed along with her—she had dark, dark eyes that sparkled prettily when she laughed—and gestured around himself. "Well, I'm no mechanic, but I could give you a lift somewhere if you want, either to a service station or home. Even just somewhere you could make a phone call."

The girl looked severely tempted, worrying her lower lip between small white teeth, her dark hair shining in the moonlight like the silky pelt of an animal. She tried to joke, but her voice trembled a little with nerves. "You know, my father _also_ told me never to accept rides from strangers."

OK, fair enough. It was time to pull out the big guns. Leaning closer out his driver's side window conspiratorially, Falcon said, "Did he say not to accept them from G.I. Joe?"

For a moment, he saw Duke's disappointed eyes in his memory and heard the Alpha Charlie he'd gotten after sneaking that girl into the Pit so long ago, but he firmly pushed those thoughts aside. This was different; he was home, and anyway, he wasn't going to be bringing anyone onto government property or telling her military secrets. He was just giving a cute girl who needed help a ride.

And it was worth it to see her face light up. "Get out of here!" she squealed, bouncing over to his window. "Really?"

He smiled, nodding his head in as courtly a manner as he could manage. "Lt. Falcon, at your service, milady. Hop into my chariot."

She giggled flirtatiously. "How can I say no to G.I. Joe?"

Falcon mentally played a little air guitar. Being on the team was the gift that kept on giving when it came to flirting with civilians. (He'd taken enough elbows to the slats to deduce that it did not work on Jinx.) He watched her hop through her open driver's side window to grab a knapsack she'd left on the driver's seat, then bounce prettily around to the Camry's passenger side door and slide in, beaming excitedly. "Thanks so much, Mister—I mean, Lieutenant."

"Just Falcon's fine," he said grandly. "What's your name?"

"Annabelle," she chirped. "It's real nice of you to give me a ride. I didn't think anyone would be out this late at night!"

"No worries," Falcon said, putting the car in gear and pulling back onto the road. "I'm on a weekend pass. Thought I'd come to see my folks, do a favor for my brother while I'm here."

"Brother?" she asked, eyes gleaming with interest. "Does he live in the area?"

After a quick game of mental Pong, Falcon decided not to tell her that Duke was the leader of the team; no sense in making himself look bad. He wanted to keep her impressed. "No, he's—he works in New York." It wasn't exactly a lie. "He just wants me to pick something up for him from the old homestead."

"Awww," the girl cooed. "What a good baby brother you are."

"Yeah, well, he owes me for this. Big time," Falcon declared, adjusting the rear view. Suddenly he watched himself frown in its reflective surface as something occurred to him. "Say, how'd you know I'm the younger brother?"

The girl blinked rapidly, but never lost her smile. "You're too young and handsome to be the older one," she laughed.

Falcon favored her with an amused smile. "I won't lie, I am the better looking one."

It got weird for a second; a shadow flickered over the girl's pretty face, and she muttered something—it sounded almost like "That's what you think."

Falcon blinked, a headache threatening to beat at his temples after this stressful day. "What?"

"That's what I think," she said happily, as if she hadn't noticed a change in the dynamic between them. "I don't take rides from just anyone." She batted those dark eyes at him again. The loveliness of her face struck him again, and he had to force himself to concentrate on the road.

Deciding to ignore it—she really was pretty—he relaxed back into his seat.

"What does your brother want you to pick up?" she asked.

Falcon rolled his eyes. "This dusty old antique compass that belonged to his dad. See, he's really my half-brother. I love him like a whole one, though, or else I'd never have agreed to get him anything he wanted to give to that ice princess."

She was quiet, and when she spoke her voice was no longer pretty; it had that weird muttering darkness to it.

"Ice princess?"

Falcon snickered. "Yeah. If Irish girls are faeries, then my brother's dating the goddamned Winter Lady. She's a total nightmare."

The girl had fallen eerily silent now, and Falcon could sense a restlessness in her, something tightly leashed but threatening to spill over.

"You OK?"

"Why would he give her a compass?" she asked, not answering his question. Ordinarily, Falcon would have found her interest odd, but he was relieved to be able to vent his spleen without knowing he had the minority opinion. This girl didn't know the whole story, and she would never have to; these would just be strangers her knight-in-shining-Camry told her about before dropping her off at her destination.

"Hell if I know," he declared. "It's not exactly flowers, but knowing my brother, he's got his reasons. He'll probably make up something sappy about finding his way to his best girl." He rolled his eyes. "He can be corny as hell, but his heart's in the right place. He doesn't give gifts lightly."

"No," the girl said softly. "No, he doesn't. He _needs_ it—he needs it to find me again."

Too late, Falcon's ears caught up with his brain and his brain with his mouth. "Hang on. What'd you say?"

She stared at him, and there was a light in her eyes that Falcon did not like. All of a sudden, it occurred to him that she wasn't the one who'd taken a ride with a stranger.

 _He_ was.

"Annabelle?" he asked, swallowing the lump in his throat with an audible click. "Where am I taking you, anyway?"

The dark girl smiled, and it was _awful_ , the stretch of a moray eel's teeth beneath its deadened eyes. He felt the barrel of the gun against his ribs without even seeing her draw it.

"Why, home," she said pleasantly, in that soft, pretty voice. "We're going to see Mama and Daddy, and pick up a compass for Duke…and his _best girl_."

Falcon cursed himself for ten different kinds of an idiot, his stomach rolling sickly hearing his brother's code name on this strange woman's lips.

"We're going to _your_ house."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

 _ **I Didn**_ _ **'**_ _ **t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier**_ is an American anti-war song written in 1915 by Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi. It is largely considered to be one of the first songs of its kind and was a big deal in getting the pacifist movement to take hold in the United States.

 **This message will self-destruct:** While it varies from canon to canon, it's generally accepted that in order to join the Joe team, its members faked their own deaths with the government's help, the way that the Men In Black erase their identities or the members of MI-5 or the IMF would be disavowed if their cover were blown. However, in more than one canon it's evidenced that the existence of the team has become public knowledge (in the Van Lente IDW run, the Baroness taunts Duke by accusing him of lying to his family and to America; in Sunbow, some of the Joes visit their families [ _Captives of Cobra_ ]). In my headcanon, I like to blame Hector Ramirez for blowing the team's cover, but then again, I like to blame Ramirez for a lot.

 **Family ties:** In comic canon, Scarlett has three brothers (Sean, Frank and Brian) and one sister (Siobhan); both parents are alive. In Sunbow canon, which is what I try to run along as much as I'm able with a few comic references thrown in for fun, her mother is deceased and she is the only girl in her family. This latter is the canon I am working within, being a motherless daughter myself. Also, if you've read the comics, Scarlett's mother and Siobhan were a horrorshow, especially the latter, and it's no great loss to me not to include them—Scarlett and I both have quite enough negativity in our lives without them.

 **Colonel Rick Stoner** is not a character I made up; he is referenced twice in this chapter, once by Duke and once by Hawk, who are both suspicious of the fact that he seems constantly attempting to poach Scarlett away from the Joes for his outfit, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate. Don't know that one? Maybe you recognize it by one of its other names—the Strategic Homeland, Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.). Both acronyms along with one other have been used to refer to the division over the years, and Colonel Rick Stoner was originally at the helm; he was assassinated by HYDRA and Nick Fury took over. This is likely anachronistic but not completely out of left field for a reference; _G.I. Joe_ 's origins are rooted in the fact that the book was originally supposed to be about Nick Fury's son and the Howling Commandos fighting HYDRA. When Hasbro wanted to buy in, they changed "HYDRA" to "Cobra", "Nick Fury Jr." to "Hawk", asked literally every writer in the Marvel bullpen to work on it until they made the complete circuit (by his own admission, Larry Hama was sitting on the other side of the room), and the rest is history. Similarly, this chapter and most of my work is littered with references to my favorite comic book character, Captain America. I often draw parallels between him and Duke Hauser, another of my favorites, because my heart has always belonged to men who put their boots on the ground every morning and do good because it is simply the right thing to do. "No… _you_ move."

 **Angela Machine** is a bit of a double homage to two of my favorite television characters, Peggy's buddy Angie the waitress on _Agent Carter_ ,and the incorrigible Cheryl Tunt on _Archer_. Her surname of "Machine" comes from the Stephen King novel _The Dark Half_ , and King borrowed it in turn from Shane Stevens ( _Dead City, The Anvil Chorus_ ). I've been struggling for a while to come up with an "administrative" Joe (although **Ami Ree** came up with an idea that had me in stitches, and I only wish she would post it), and I think Machine finally fits the bill—she was fun to write. Having spent most of my adult life in some kind of administrative capacity to pay the bills, I agree with Angie that you either find a sense of humor about it, or you look for other work.

 **"A bad episode of** _ **Miami Vice**_ **":** While enduring his unwanted flirting, Jinx tells Falcon that he sounds like "a bad episode of _Miami Vice_ "—which isn't that far off-base considering Don Johnson, who played Sonny Crockett, voiced Falcon in the 1987 _G.I. Joe_ movie. (Fun fact: Johnson was originally supposed to voice Chuckles, but balked and was given the role of Falcon instead.)

 **On the front kick:** The front kick is indeed a "white belt technique", and was the first thing I learned when I began my martial arts training. But one of my teachers always quoted, "I do not fear the fighter who knows a hundred moves; I fear the fighter who knows one move, but knows it perfectly." And my sensei once won the first round of a tournament in the 80s with that same "white belt technique"—his opponent charged him, and Sensei was so surprised by the frontal assault that he countered with a simple, beginner's front kick…so hard he sent the guy out of the ring and through a plate-glass window. Had they not been on the ground floor, Sensei told me when relating this story, his opponent would have ended up dead. Again, a _beginner_ _'_ _s_ technique. I never forgot that story.

Duke's mentioning **the seventh step to the sun** is an homage to the excellently executed movie _G.I. Joe: Resolute_. I know not every Joe fan liked it, but I loved _Resolute_ and only wish we could have more Joe stories along its vein. Similarly, Snake Eyes mentioning **the ear that sees** is a reference to the comic canon story of the death of the Hard Master.

I received a Night Force **Night Boomer** as a gift once, on one of the best days of my life. It wasn't just the gift but the giver that humbled me with their kindness. I have had to sell many things to keep my head above water over the years; I will never sell that jet.

The dark woman jokes to Brett Glieson, a character of my own creation who sadly did not live to see the end of this chapter, that she'll pay him **thirty pieces of silver** for his trouble, which is what Judas got for diming out Jesus Christ. I don't know what's more depressing—that everyone has a price, or that the price is always so low.

Falcon jokingly refers to Scarlett as **The Winter Lady**. In Jim Butcher's _Dresden Files_ novels, there is a matriarchy in the faerie courts, both Seelie and Unseelie—Crone, Queen, and Lady as the youngest, all as dangerous as they are beautiful. Being Irish myself, I love faerie lore.

OK, there were more references in that chapter than I thought. I'm tired. I'm going to go make a sandwich. If you have read this far, you have my thanks.


	2. A Boy In Khaki, A Girl In Lace

**Childe Scarlett to the Dark Tower Came:**

Like Roland of Gilead, I can't seem to keep traveling companions at my side, and like Roland, it's never my intent to lose them. Sometimes our paths cross again; sometimes they don't; I'm grateful for the former but resigned to the latter. I'm going to keep telling my stories. Anyone who wishes to sit and listen can consider themselves more than welcome to do so—even if they had previously gotten up and wandered off, they can certainly sit back down if they like—and as for me, I'll simply enjoy the company while I have it. But the traveling companions I never lose are the characters whose stories I am privileged to tell, and I'm unceasingly grateful for that. Basically, I'm hearing the story for the first time, too.

What surprises me more than anything else is whose story this actually is. Duke and Scarlett are far and away my favorite Joes to write about, with Flint and Jaye a close second (I always toy with the idea of featuring them in a story of their own), but this story belongs to one of the characters I was _never_ fond of as a child. This is Falcon's story, and while I still share Scarlett's reasons for disliking him (more on that later), I admit I have mellowed towards him somewhat with the help of an adult's understanding and a writer's inclination to bend something along its axis to make more sense to me. I'm not fond of "Annabelle" either, but the more I thought about it the more I realized this Machiavellian plot could only be hers. More on that later, too.

This is Falcon's story, and if his luck doesn't change, it may end on the lonely side of a Missouri highway.

* * *

 **And The Horse You Rode In On**

 _a G.I. Joe fanfiction by Firestar9mm_

* * *

 **Chapter Two: A Boy In Khaki, A Girl In Lace**

 _The same old sweethearts, the same old place  
A boy in khaki, a girl in lace  
He bends to kiss her, she lifts her face  
The boy in khaki, the girl in lace  
Tenderly he sighs, "I will come back to you,"  
"Oh my darling, please do," she replies  
And so we leave them in fond embrace  
A boy in khaki, a girl in lace_

 **(Dinah Shore,** _ **A Boy In Khaki, A Girl In Lace**_ **)**

* * *

Duke wasn't the only one who had had plans to dig out an antique over the coming weekend.

Lady Jaye and Flint had both promised their first shirt they would dial back the hazing when it came to Falcon, but not all the Joes had heard this news—even the red sock hadn't gotten the memo in time to stop itself from turning Falcon's laundry pink. (There were a few pairs of pink jockey shorts in the duffel bag that was sitting in the back of Falcon's rented Camry when he pulled over to pick up who he had thought was just a cute hitchhiker.)

One of the Joes who hadn't gotten word to go easier on Falcon was Breaker. He and Clutch had thought it might be funny to plant a tracking device on the kid-he was sure to end up at a bar, and a few prank phone calls would effectively torpedo any chance he had of getting laid that night. Most surprisingly, Jinx had volunteered to pretend to be the girlfriend who would call the bar and ask the bartender to inform Falcon that the doctor had promised "it" wasn't contagious, and the meds should clear it right up.

"Jealous, Jinx-O?" Clutch had asked cheekily, whipping a plastic comb out of his pocket and dragging it through his hair, checking his reflection in the windshield of a VAMP. "Sounds like you don't want Falcon taking a tumble with another girl."

Jinx had sniffed haughtily. "Hardly," she'd said. "I just can't pass up an opportunity to take the wind out of that blowhard's sails." But her cheeks had flushed prettily as she'd spoken and she'd tossed her head of dark, shining hair like a restless filly.

All they'd really needed to know was where Falcon was going to be that night, a variable Breaker had had no problem securing with a relic from the early days of the G.I. Joe team, one he was pretty sure most of the Joes didn't even remember they had-which meant he'd had no trouble swiping it from the Think Tank. Falcon, who hadn't quite been able to let go of the BMOC persona he had affected before joining the Joe team, still wore a class ring while in civilian clothing—something he used to regale the girls at the local watering hole with tales of past high school glories. It wasn't hard for Jinx, who'd been in Scarlett's martial arts session with Falcon that morning, to swap one ring for another.

Breaker knew things were going according to plan when he slid into his chair in the Tank that evening. He blew a bubblegum bubble, checked the frequency of that old but reliable tracking device and saw a steady light blinking on the radar, above a quickly scrolling feed detailing its coordinates as it moved.

The bubble popped in his grin.

* * *

The Camry rolled at a sedate speed down the highway. Falcon wasn't stupid enough to try and slow down with a gun in his ribs, but he'd be damned if he was going to hurry along.

"You're really not thinking this through," he remarked conversationally to his passenger. "If you shoot me, we wreck."

"Please, Lieutenant Falcon. I'd have the car straightened out before your feet drummed their last seizure melody on the floorboard." The dark-haired woman in the passenger seat spoke calmly, as if this were a pleasant road trip. "Of course, you'd be charged for the damage to the upholstery, but by then you would be beyond such paltry concerns."

"You knew who I was the minute I pulled up next to your car," Falcon guessed—if she was making jokes, then she felt like she had the upper hand, and Falcon had seen enough Bond movies to know that people who thought they had the upper hand could usually be induced to talk. It was a long shot, but maybe she would give him some information he could use.

Use for _what_ , he wasn't sure, since he still had a gun shoved in his ribs, but G.I. Joes didn't go down without a fight.

"Didn't you?" he pressed, flicking a look her way.

His passenger's contented-cat smile told him he was right. "Lieutenant Vincent Falcone, Green Beret—although how _you_ got promoted I'll never know, since your primary specialty seems to be womanizing, your secondary irresponsibility. Code name: Falcon. _That's_ original. What happened there, Lieutenant? Did G.I. Joe run out of creative names for its operatives?"

Falcon seethed. His code name, like Duke's, had been a nickname before it had been a code name. It had come from Duke himself—and like everything his brother gave him, Falcon was overprotective of it. He would die before telling this strange woman that he had once been "Little Falcon", but he'd be damned if he'd let her mock his brother's gift to him. Rather than telling her off and possibly hastening his own death, he parried with, "What's _your_ name, anyway? I'm going to guess it isn't really 'Annabelle'."

" _You_ can call me Yarara," she said haughtily.

"Is that really your name?"

"It is now. Drive." She jabbed his ribs with the muzzle of the gun for emphasis.

"Look, lady, this highway is a speed trap—the staties love to lay for kids drag-racing or tourists who think rules don't apply to them. But if you'd like to get pulled over, I can by all means go faster. Maybe you can tell the nice officer how you convinced me to give you a ride." He glanced pointedly at the gun.

Undaunted, she pressed the barrel of the weapon mercilessly into his side, her voice a hiss. "If we get pulled over, I will kill the policeman or woman who stops us, and that blood will be on your hands. So don't get any ideas about trying to summon help by breaking the law."

In truth, Falcon had just assumed she would shoot him and take the car to make a quick getaway in the event of their getting pulled over, so he hadn't intended to try it, but innocent lives were an even better incentive than his own to do what she ordered. "Relax. If there was a cop anywhere near here, they'd have stopped when they saw you on the side of the road." He blinked, realization dawning on him. "But you weren't worried about that, were you? You knew you'd be picked up before that happened. You just didn't think it would be me who found you."

Again, a flinch told him he was on to something; whatever poker face this woman normally had was being more and more affected the closer she got to her goal, and since he had no intention of helping her reach it, he needed to find out as much as he could right now.

"In fact, you were _surprised_ to see me," he remembered suddenly. Slowly, so as not to startle her, he reached to adjust the rear view mirror. The gun tracked his movement, but he refused to flinch. "You were obviously waiting out there for someone, but it wasn't me. Why'd you get into my car if I wasn't the one you were waiting for?"

In truth, Falcon didn't care about the rear view. The road was deserted, and he'd already made up his mind that he would die out here rather than lead this woman to his parents' home; he'd adjusted the mirror to get a better view of his passenger without having to take his eyes off of what was ahead. Now, in its reflection, he saw her face twist in scorn.

"You'll do, baby brother," was all she said, voice dripping with poison—and the slightest trace of an accent. It was barely noticeable, and Falcon got the idea that she had worked hard to drop it, but her heightened emotions now had it cutting up through her smooth tone like a shark's fin. He filed the information away for later—if there _was_ a later—in case it might be useful; one never knew. "You'll do. You're right, you aren't the one I want, but I've been waiting too long to turn back now."

Something she'd said earlier clicked into place in Falcon's brain. "Duke," he said, cold fear knifing through his heart as he realized who had been supposed to be on this road tonight in his place. "You were waiting for Duke."

The obsidian eyes gleamed with excitement—and, he was sure of it now, insanity—at the sound of his brother's code name. "Of course," she said, as if this should have been obvious. "I promised."

"Promised _what_?" Falcon burst out. "Promised _who_?"

"Promised _him_ , not _you_ ," she cried, and he heard a petulant whine beneath the manufactured calm in her voice. "Why are _you_ here? You're not supposed to be wearing Duke's ring!"

"What are you talking about?" Falcon asked, completely confused. " _This_ ring is the one I always wear. Roosevelt High. Go Rough Riders." He thumped his class ring against the steering wheel for emphasis. "And Duke doesn't wear a ring at all."

Pain exploded at his temple. Black stars blinked against the edges of his vision and he lost control of the car momentarily, swerving across the center lines. The pain in his ribs lessened slightly with the release of the pressure that had been on them; she had pistol-whipped him, and now the gun was pressed against his cheek. The barrel was grotesquely warm from its time spent jammed into his side.

"You _lie!_ " she hissed, and for a moment he flinched, fearing another strike, but instead she simply ground the barrel harder against his cheek. "I swore I would hunt that man down someday—that we would finish what we started. And now _you_ are in the last place in the world you want to be— _in my way_."

Falcon didn't like her predatory choice of words; it made him fear for his brother in that protective but helpless way Duke's being in danger had always made him feel. But she was back on the subject of killing him, and that took precedence-he was the one in her crosshairs; Duke was safe for now.

"You're wrong," he told her, knuckles tightening on the steering wheel to force a strained creak from the leather, his voice sounding braver than he felt. "If I can stop you from getting to my brother, I'm _exactly_ where I want to be. If you want to hurt Duke, you're gonna have to go through me, and gun or no gun, I think you'll find that won't be as easy as you think."

Unbelievably, the gun wavered a little; drifting away from his face. Her high brow crimped in confusion. "What?" she asked softly, almost to herself. "What are you talking about?"

"What am _I_ talking about?" Falcon asked incredulously, head pounding sickly from the blow she'd dealt him. "You are just all over the place tonight, lady. For something you've apparently been waiting a long time for, this doesn't seem like much of a plan. What were you going to do, shoot Duke if he pulled over on the shoulder to help you? Did you really come all this way just to kill him on a back road?"

She hit him again, and dimly, through the pain, he heard her cry out in startled rage-no, _outrage_ , as if what he had said was blasphemy.

" _Shut up_!" she shrieked, voice huge in the small space. "You have no _idea_ how long I've waited for this night! _You—know_ — _nothing_!"

Falcon fought a wave of dizziness and told himself he would not die vomiting in a rented car. The last time he'd felt this sick in a moving vehicle had been on a long-ago night in which he'd been joyriding with a group of older boys—all he'd wanted that summer was to be accepted as part of their little gang, but he'd been too young and eager to realize that their "initiation rites" had mostly been them simply having fun at his expense. Duke had put an end to it eventually, but in the beginning he hadn't known exactly how stupid and dangerous some of the stunts Vince and his new friends had been pulling were.

What Falcon was remembering now was the night they had "borrowed" the keys to Jimmy Knox's older brother's Dart and gone for a ride. None of them had had their licenses yet, but that had made it all the more exciting-until the deer had bolted across the back road they were on, then wheeled in the center of the lane and headed right back the way it had come, as deer tend to do when faced with an oncoming car. Jimmy had swerved and stomped on the brake, and Falcon, who had been up front and not wearing a seat belt, had slammed face first into the glove box.

He had woken up on the side of the road to overhear them planning to dump him on his own front porch and run if he didn't come to, so as not to get into trouble. It had been the first time it had occurred to him that maybe these boys weren't his friends after all, but he'd doggedly stuck with them until Duke had put a stop to his spending time with them. Upon returning home that particular evening, Falcon had told Duke they'd just been goofing around and he'd taken an elbow to the face, resulting in the bruise he'd come home with, but Duke hadn't believed him and had begun keeping a closer eye on what the little group of misfits was doing that summer—until one big incident had compelled him to end Vince's association with those boys once and for all.

But big brother wasn't here tonight to save him, Falcon realized dizzily. He was going to have to save himself. He had to keep her talking—if she was talking, she wouldn't be thinking about hurting him or anyone else.

"How do you even _know_ Duke?" he asked, fighting to keep his voice calm despite his sickly rolling stomach and aching head. "I've known him all of my life and most of his, and I have no idea who you are. You said you wanted to finish what you started, so I'm guessing you two went head-to-head during the years I thought he was KIA. When was that, anyway?"

She retrained the gun on him, wall-eyed, as if the questions themselves maddened her. "That?" she asked softly. "That was _before_ , of course."

"Before what?" Falcon pressed. "Before Duke was a G.I. Joe? Before you were...whatever you are?"

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. "That," she said, "was when he turned my life upside down. _That_ was before I was cast out into a world in which nothing was left for me. _That_ ," she said, voice rising in the enclosed cabin of the car with the exultation of a cultist, "was before I learned that the meek will inherit _nothing,_ Lieutenant. That I would have to _fight_ for what was rightfully mine."

 _I am in trouble,_ Falcon thought. _Oh, Duke, I am in so much trouble._

" _That_ was before I found another way," she finished, and with the hand that wasn't training the gun on him, she pulled the neckline of her peasant blouse down. While this was not nearly as titillating for Falcon as it would have been twenty minutes earlier, he already knew what he'd see—and there it was, stamped on the tag she wore around her neck, so similar to the ones he wore around his own. Not a name, a rank or serial number, but a picture—a symbol he was all too familiar with, brilliantly red and gruesomely cartoonish. The head of a hissing snake, its hood frilling out around its malevolent eyes and bared fangs.

" _Their_ way."

"Cobra," Falcon said aloud. "I should have known."

"Enough," she spat. "How much longer until we're home?"

It was her use of the word "home" that drove Falcon to his next reckless maneuver—better he die here than lead this psychopath to his family like a coward. "I guess I'm just one big disappointment for you tonight, Yarara. I'm not Duke, I don't know you, I don't know anything about anything, and I'm sure as hell not taking you anywhere near my family."

"That's what you think," she said, pressing the gun against his side once more.

"Go ahead and shoot me!" Falcon said brashly, easing down on the gas pedal and hoping she was too keyed-up to notice their steadily increasing speed. "It won't get you any closer to any of the things you want. You really screwed up tonight, you know that? Getting in my car was a little mistake. Threatening innocent lives was a _huge_ mistake. Threatening my brother? _Massive_ mistake. But you want to know what the biggest mistake of all was?" Without waiting for an answer, he smiled charmingly at her.

"You didn't buckle your seat belt."

Before she could say anything else, he stomped on the brake, and she cannoned forward into the dash, just like he himself had all those years ago. There was a sound like a stick of butter falling on a tiled kitchen floor, but it was masked by a much more ominous sound-in her pain and disorientation, she had squeezed down on the trigger.

"Joseph H. Colton—!" Falcon swore, ducking and reflexively turning the wheel as the bullet whined past his ear. The shot mercifully missed him and punched a hole in the Camry's roof, but the damage had already been done—in his haste to get down, Falcon's foot had come down hard on the gas as he made himself a smaller target. Before he could correct his course, the car was going off the road.

"Oh, shit," Falcon gasped, stomping on the brake and trying to right the car but only succeeding in sending it into an unstable swerve. He felt a sickening teeter that no amount of clever driving would be able to correct. "No. No, no, no—"

Too late. Later, Falcon would not be able to explain to his rescuer what exactly had happened. He retained small useless things-branches whipping the windshield, the sounds of breaking glass and crumpling metal, an impact that swapped the car's ends so that he could not see what was coming as their course took a steep slope downward. Yarara remained unconscious, and perhaps that was a mercy; Falcon, who _had_ been wearing his seatbelt, was knocked out in one final, shuddering impact that rattled his teeth down to the fillings and put out his lights.

The ring on the incapacitated G.I. Joe's finger continued to beam its invisible beacon over the airwaves.

* * *

"I'm so sorry you didn't get to go home," Scarlett said, upper body propped against the pillow at one arm of the small sofa in Duke's quarters, legs stretched across his lap while he played with her hair.

"I am home," Duke murmured, pulling gently on her ponytail to urge her to tilt her head up to him, then leaning down and kissing her sweetly. "If you mean I didn't get to go to the house I grew up in and visit with my parents, sure I'm disappointed, but I'll get there soon enough."

"You're not jealous of Falcon?" she asked.

"Jealous of my brother?" Duke said. "Not at all. I've got the most beautiful woman in the world in my quarters..." He punctuated this compliment by fondly caressing her breasts through her blouse; Scarlett raised her arms above her head happily, pushing them forward as if they ached for his touch. "...and if he scores tonight it'll be after spending a fortune on beers, in the back of a rented Cutlass Ciera that he'll get charged extra for after ruining the upholstery."

Scarlett laughed aloud, and that was one of his favorite things about their sexual relationship. Yes, the steamy, Hollywood passion was there—the desperate grip of his hands, the score of his teeth, the clawing of her nails into his back and her whimpers rising to squeals when they loved each other too hard for their bodies to bear—and he loved that, but he loved just as well when their couplings began with fun and laughter, culminating in comfortable, affectionate romps that were no less pleasurable or exciting.

While he was basking in the sound of her laughter, Scarlett ran her hands up his chest, fingers twinkling at his buttons, undoing first one, then two, then a third. While one hand continued working on that, she slipped the other into his partially opened shirt and caressed his nipple; it hardened eagerly beneath her fingertip and he shuddered, suddenly curious to hear what other happy sounds he could coax his darling into making.

He was less graceful than she as he opened her own class-A shirt, which she'd changed into after putting the martial arts session through their paces; he made short work of the buttons with deft, almost impatient movements. He wasn't disappointed to discover that she'd dressed for him upon learning he was staying on base—the half-cups of her bra exposed the tops of her breasts, and the brief silver-gray lace that cradled them gave peekaboo glimpses of the skin beneath it.

Love, Duke reasoned pleasantly as he lifted her to straddle his lap, was never tiring of seeing someone naked.

"I can't say I'm not selfishly happy to have you on base tonight," she murmured, trailing a finger down his chest and toying with the thin line of blond hair that began low on his belly till she reached his belt buckle, a favorite caress of hers and one that never failed to make him shiver with pleasure.

"Darling, you can have me anywhere you want," he promised, kissing first one breast, then the other as he settled her astride him.

Scarlett gave a purr of contentment, pressing her knees against his sides possessively and dragging her nails lightly through the blond hair at the nape of his neck, just the way he liked. "I like you right here, Top Kick. You're..." She sighed and shifted atop his lap, and his hands drifted to her hips, encouraging her to repeat the movement. "...You're good right here."

Why, he thought dazedly, did couples who had been together a long time stop making out? She still made him feel seventeen, a lightheaded seventeen with the entire world in front of him. Her mouth was warm and sweet on his, the promise of her breasts against his chest and the friction of her body against his as exciting as it had been the first time he had realized he wouldn't have to stop—that she wanted him the way he wanted her and they would make love, the way he'd been dreaming of ever since he'd first seen her and lost his heart.

Scarlett kept trying to break away to undress him, but Duke didn't want to part for even that long. They were kissing almost continually, her concentration divided between his lips and the shirt she was pulling off his shoulders and down his arms, the belt she was trying hastily to unbuckle. Duke laughed into her mouth at her impatience, but the laughter turned into a low whine of wanting as she unbuttoned his fatigues, sliding a hand inside to stroke him.

Scarlett nipped gently at his neck, pressed kisses to his flushed skin as he fought an urge to buck against her hand. She felt him tense and caught his mouth with hers as she continued to caress him. His laughter was a little more threadbare as he broke the kiss to murmur, "Much more of that, honey, and I'm going to stain my shorts."

While he was hardly joking—she had such a hold on him in every way, including the physical—he assumed she'd giggle and let him scoop her up in his arms and carry her to bed, an indulgence of his strength that he treasured when she allowed it. Instead, she was off his lap in a flash, hands on his thighs as she knelt in front of him. "We can't have that," she said, breasts pressing enticingly against his shins, her eyes bright.

"Scarlett!" he laughed. "Come back here. I didn't mean—"

But then she gently nudged his knees apart with her elbows and settled between them, nuzzling at his inner thigh as she stroked him again; he tangled his fingers in her bright red tail of hair to stop himself from clutching roughly at the back of her head like a teenage boy. "Oh...Scarlett..."

"Yes?" she trilled. He wasn't sure if she was saying it in response to his call of her name, or if she was asking his permission to continue, but either way he didn't want her to stop; she caressed him again and he realized he'd closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on how she was making him feel, as he dazedly nodded his assent.

She left off briefly to make some adjustments to his clothing, and he shuddered as she freed him, letting his head fall back and pushing his body towards her in invitation.

"Say please, Conrad," she entreated softly, and he groaned. It wasn't just that her touch had him so worked up, or how sexy she sounded when she asserted control over him—and she had control of him, utterly, in moments like these—it was the simple fact that they had met as comrades-in-arms, introduced by code names, and when she said _Conrad_ it was almost always in an intimate setting. She would say _I love you, Conrad_ before taking his breath away with a passionate kiss; moan _Oh, yes, Conrad_ when he was deep in her heat and thrusting; whisper _I'm yours, Conrad_ when she would hold him close to stroke his hair and soothe him after he'd abandoned himself to his own pleasure. Now his body was conditioned to stir at the sound of his given name from her lips, knowing that it meant she had loving on her mind.

She hadn't said it mockingly or smugly; there was nothing in her tone that indicated she wanted to tease him or make him beg. He had a feeling she just liked to see him flushed and flustered because he was desperate for her to touch him, kiss him, caress him. He understood that; _he_ certainly felt a strong sense of pride when she gasped at the feel of him sheathed inside her, when she arched to offer her breasts to his hands or his mouth as though she craved his touch, when she dragged her nails down his back and cried out for him as he brought her. He was fiercely proud that _he_ was the man she had chosen; the only man to have her in that most intimate embrace. If it excited her to hear him ask her to pleasure him, he could not deny her that, any more than he could deny himself his own ecstasy at her hands.

"Please," he murmured lustfully, helplessly, his fingers sliding through her soft hair. "Please, Shana."

The knock at his door was simply too farcical for words.

Scarlett gave a soft moue of surprise, looking up towards the door, and Duke's groan was of exasperation this time rather than desire. He muttered a curse, petting Scarlett's hair in an effort to keep her where he wanted her. "Maybe they'll just go away."

They didn't. The knocking was louder, more insistent this time, as if the intruder was using the side of his fist instead of his knuckles now; he accompanied that with an announcement of his presence. "Top? Don't mean to bother ya, but you might wanna hear this."

"It's Breaker," Scarlett said, settling back on her heels and disappointingly taking herself out of his hands. "What could he possibly want?"

As annoyed at the interruption as he was, Duke knew none of his Joes, Breaker included, would trouble him here in his quarters unless it was important, whether Scarlett was with him or not. Giving up on carnal pleasures for the moment, he began fastening his pants. "I don't know, but we should probably find out."

"Do you want me to go in the bedroom?" Scarlett asked politely. For all Duke's bravado in front of Lady Jaye, she was right to think that the team had collectively become aware of his relationship with Scarlett. Not because of a lack of discretion on either of their parts-save for a dark time in which he had nearly lost her, and his grief and fear had been too much for him to hide; to this day he took full responsibility for blowing the game and was plainly grateful for how favorable the consequences had been-but simply because what they had was too strong to go unnoticed or denied any longer. It gave Duke no small sense of relief that the Joes who hadn't greeted this knowledge with outright cheer (Jaye and Flint, especially, acted like he'd finally gotten up the nerve to ask the most popular girl in school to the prom, something that alternately amused and annoyed him) seemed to simply accept it as a fact of life in the Pit, like Beach Head's refusal to wear deodorant, or the tape deck in Cross-Country's H.A.V.O.C. More importantly—perhaps _most_ importantly—General Hawk himself had turned a blind eye upon his discovery of their fraternization, and it was perhaps that fact that had prompted the Joes to accept it so easily.

Well, Hawk's eye wasn't _entirely_ blind-the general had kept his promise and ordered Angie Machine to take Scarlett off the duty roster the next night as a favor to Duke for canceling his leave. That meant Hawk's blessing, which Duke already knew they had, but it would be an item of interest to the other Joes because Machine had been brought in on it. And if Machine knew, everyone knew—the Joe admin was a comrade to everyone in the Pit and naturally friendly, so while she was great at keeping their secrets from the outside world, she was terrible at keeping secrets on the base itself.

Still, Scarlett had offered to step aside all the same while he dealt with Breaker. Duke was still the leader of the team; Scarlett would not make him look unprofessional if she could avoid it, and he appreciated that, although he had no intention of taking her up on her offer. To do so when the secret was basically a formality at this point would have implied he was ashamed of her—of _them_ —and nothing could have been further from the truth.

"There's no need for that." Duke shook his head, buckling his belt. Standing up, he shrugged back into his shirt and fastened most of the buttons. After a moment's consideration, he forewent tucking it back into his fatigues for the obvious reason. "We're only hiding in plain sight at this point. I'd just as soon have you with me if the news is bad."

She nodded, closing her own shirt over her flirty bra. "Let me button up. There in a minute."

Breaker's fist was poised to knock a third time when Duke opened the door. "Sorry, Duke, I know youuuu're..." Breaker trailed off in a drawl, noticing how perturbed his field commander looked. His eyes bounced from Duke's flushed face and mussed hair to his untucked, partially unbuttoned shirt and back up to the love bite on his neck, barely visible in its newness, the blood still rushing to the spot. Realization dawned on the communications expert. "Shit. I picked a bad time, didn't I?"

"No such thing as a good time, Breaker," Duke said with faux cheerfulness. "By the way, I hope next time you're on leave you forget to put a condom in your wallet and have to slam on the brakes."

"Duke, I am _flattered_ you think I get that much action," Breaker said, taking the pointed hexing in stride and giving his field commander a wink. Despite this bravado, he was much shyer when Scarlett appeared a moment later, fully dressed and her ponytail retied and smoothed. Breaker dunked his head awkwardly in acknowledgement of her, blushing with a conscious effort to respectfully avoid a mental picture of what he might have interrupted. "Hi, Scarlett. Sorry to barge in. Really, I am."

"What's wrong, Breaker?" Scarlett asked, politely but briskly. "Is it Cobra?"

"It's Falcon," Breaker responded, chewing his ever-present gum a little faster as he broke what he seemed sure was bad news.

Duke put his hand over his eyes and groaned. "What'd the little bastard do this time? If it's a bar fight, tell them he'll apologize. Can you try to find out who he insulted and what he said?" Scarlett turned her head, trying to hide a roll of her eyes; this was not entirely successful.

Breaker blinked, shaking his head. "No, Duke, it's—"

Duke interrupted again. "He got into a pissing contest with local police and tried to pull rank? Tell them I'll _talk_ to him about his attitude, all right? Get a number and a sergeant's name and tell them I'll call them in the morning." All of this was delivered in the weary, practiced tone of a father who has had far too many parent-teacher conferences on the same subjects, and Scarlett shifted almost imperceptibly to press comfortingly against his side, reminding him of her presence without the touch of her hand.

" _No_ , Duke," Breaker tried again. "I think he's in trouble."

This got both Duke and Scarlett's attention finally; even the redhead, whose dislike for Falcon was well-known around the Pit along with her reason for it, seemed concerned.

"What do you mean, in trouble?" she asked, instantly alert. "How do you know?"

Breaker flushed helplessly, eyes flicking guiltily to Duke. "We were gonna...we thought it would be funny to play a little trick on him later tonight."

Duke frowned. "Thanks for nothing, Lady Jaye," he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head.

"Nothing bad," Breaker defended. "We were just going to prank call whatever bar he went to tonight and take the piss out of him a little bit."

Duke groaned. "Oh, for the love of..."

Scarlett's steel-trap mind immediately isolated the important part of that sentence. "How did you know what bar he was going to be at tonight? Did he tell you where he was going?"

Breaker looked miserable, rubbing the back of his neck. "We sorta...put a bug on him."

Scarlett blinked. "You did _what_?"

Duke closed his eyes and allowed himself a long-suffering sigh. "Who's 'we'?"

"Me, Clutch and Jinx." Breaker winced. "Which of us are you going to kill first?"

"Falcon," Duke said immediately, surprising both Breaker and Scarlett until he explained, "for not double-checking his gear and for allowing himself to be bugged. The rest of you can draw straws. I told Lady Jaye this afternoon-you guys have _got_ to start going easier on him, or he's never going to learn to be a part of this team."

"Wait, Duke," Scarlett said, putting a steadying hand on his arm. "Maybe this isn't the worst thing in the world. If Falcon really is in trouble, their stupid joke might be the only way we can find out for sure. Breaker, is the tracking device still on? Do you know where Falcon is?"

Duke flicked the barest glance at Scarlett, almost too quick to notice, but Breaker saw the warm sparkle in the field commander's normally frosty blue eyes, a gleam of admiration for his practical princess. Breaker wasn't about to argue—Scarlett had just given him an out.

"I don't know _exactly_ where he is, no," the communications expert said. "The tracker stopped moving, but not where it should have. It's sitting in the middle of nowhere and it hasn't budged. It's not at your house, Duke, and it's not at any of the local bars. I'm trying to pinpoint the exact coordinates, but it looks like it's in the middle of the wooded nowhere off the highway."

Duke and Scarlett exchanged looks.

"Could he have found it and thrown it out the window of his rental car?" Scarlett asked. "Where did you plant it? In his luggage?"

Breaker flushed again. "Doubt it, Red. It's...it's in the ring he's wearing. We sorta...swapped his class ring for one of the ones we used to take into the field. The ones we don't use anymore."

Scarlett pinched the bridge of her nose as though this information had given her a headache. "Oh for the love of hell. I didn't even know we still _had_ any of those. Anyway, he still could have figured out you made the switch."

But Duke shook his head. "I don't know. Falcon's not exactly the biggest stickler for detail, and that ring has become a habit for him-he probably didn't even glance at it, just put it on. Our school colors were crimson and white. The rings would look virtually identical-both were set with a red stone. It's one of the reasons I hated them so much. Made me homesick."

Scarlett's lovely face softened, and Breaker got the idea that if he hadn't been standing there she'd have embraced Duke, but she settled for squeezing his bicep, a physical expression of her presence at Duke's side that Breaker was surprised she had made in front of him.

"Scarlett could be right," Breaker said hopefully. "Maybe Falcon figured out what we did, threw the thing out of his car and is driving towards home calling us all assholes right now. But if he didn't..."

"...then he's lying in the woods somewhere with that ring on his finger," Duke concluded gravely.

"Maybe it's nothing," Breaker said, trying to keep his tone light. "Maybe I'm worrying for no reason, but I thought you'd want to know."

Duke nodded, clapping Breaker gently on the shoulder. "You did the right thing, Breaker. I'm glad you told me. Scarlett is probably right and he just threw the thing away. Do me a favor and let me know if you hear from him; in the meantime, I'll make some calls."

Breaker nodded, relieved that Duke didn't seem to be too furious with him; he turned to scurry back to his beloved communications hub for the evening's watch. "Roger that, Top. Like I said, I'm sorry to bother you, but I thought you'd want to know. Enjoy the rest of your night, you two."

But there was no chance of that anymore. When the door closed behind them, Duke slammed his fist into the wall and muttered a curse, then braced his forearm against the wall and his brow against his arm with a sigh. He loved his brother, but the kid was going to make him go gray before his time.

Scarlett put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Duke. Listen to me. He isn't nearly as good as you, but your brother can hold his own in a fight. He's also very clever, even if he's sometimes blinded by his own ego. If someone's after his ass out there, he'll give them a run for their money. And that's coming from someone who considers tripping him every time he passes her."

"It would mean the world to me if you two could bury the hatchet on this," Duke murmured, turning to take her in his arms, "but I appreciate your honesty." He lifted her chin with a gentle hand to give her a sweet, almost chaste kiss, then sighed again, resting his forehead against hers for a moment. "I'm sorry, Red, but I've got to cut this date short. I can't enjoy myself while my brother might be in trouble. Probably it'll all be for nothing, and I'll just be ticked off that he spoiled my time with you, but I've got to at least check it out."

"Not without me," Scarlett said, surprising him. He could tell she was just as disappointed to end their "date" early, but her smile was encouraging and for his benefit. "I'm coming along. Let's go talk to Machine. She had his travel arrangements."

 _Best girlfriend in the world_ , Duke thought with boyish gratitude, wondering for the umpteenth time why Vince couldn't see that. "You're too good to me," he said, gently taking her arm as she tried to walk past him and out the door, pulling her close instead to kiss her properly, then releasing her before their embrace could completely relight the fire Breaker's interruption had banked.

Scarlett laughed, kissing the scar on his cheek and nuzzling him affectionately. "Not half as good as you deserve. Come on. The sooner we solve this mystery, the sooner I get you back on that couch...and then I'll be _really_ good to you."

* * *

They found Machine in the recreation room huddled over the Nintendo, hurling obscenities at the television screen while Simon Belmont plummeted off a platform to his doom. Apparently this had been going on for quite some time; Tunnel Rat, Cover Girl and Roadblock were at the pool table, and they had heard the little death-knell the game blared every time Simon dropped into a gap enough times to mimic it cheekily as it played.

"Shut the hell up, you guys," Machine declared, not looking over her shoulder to flip them off, then muttering, "Goddamned Medusa heads."

"Hey, Angie," Duke said by way of greeting, and the Joe admin looked up from her cross-legged seated position on the floor. "Got a second?"

"No. Dracula is going to enslave the entire countryside if I don't get past these goddamned Medusa heads and kill the Grim Reaper," Machine informed them matter-of-factly, swiveling her gaze back to the TV. Her ponytail swung with her movements, seeming as full of hyper energy as Machine herself.

"It's important," Scarlett pressed. "We may have a Joe in trouble."

"Then I have entire minutes," Machine said, just as matter-of-factly. She dropped the controller and stood up, ignoring Simon getting blitzed and sent into the pit for the umpteenth time. "Not sure how a paper-pusher can help you, but what's the problem?"

Duke smiled in relief. Machine was wacky, but she took her job-and her Joes-seriously. "We have reason to believe Lieutenant Falcon hasn't reached his destination. Can you pull up his travel arrangements and help us track him down?"

Machine blushed, smoothing her copper-colored ponytail nervously.

"What?" Duke asked.

"Beggin' your pardon, Duke, honest, but are you sure he isn't just...you know...out on a...like, date?" Machine's face was almost the color of her hair.

Duke fought a momentary urge to strangle his brother for the reputation he'd cultivated with such hellish speed, while Scarlett gave Machine a very disappointed look. "Please tell me you know better than to do what I'm thinking, Machine," she said.

Both Duke and Scarlett were relieved as Machine regained her composure and swept her arm out in a negative gesture. "Hey, I don't get my meat where I make my bread. But I will say the boy gives a hell of a shoulder massage."

Scarlett rolled her eyes. "I don't want to know," Duke muttered, rubbing his temples and squinting. "Trust me, Machine, I'm _hoping_ he just got lucky and lost track of time, but I'll feel better if we can find out for sure."

"You got it," Machine said, turning to call out to the rest of the room's inhabitants, "TV's free, you guys."

"Hot damn," Cover Girl said, putting her pool cue aside. "Hockey preseason, baby. I get the couch. Thanks, Angie!"

"Thanks, Angie," Duke echoed as they exited the room and headed for the offices, although he was thanking her for something entirely different.

"You bet, Top. Don't worry," Machine said cheerfully. "I bet everything's fine. Falcon will wake up hung over and sorry for what he's done, with a tattoo that says _Betty Lou_."

"I'll cross my fingers for that," Scarlett said. "And then never let him live it down." She tipped Duke a wink, and he realized she was ripping on Falcon for his amusement, not hers; she was trying to jolly him out of his nerves. He gave her a grateful smile.

But the calls Angie made to the rental car company didn't yield anything helpful. Yes, Lieutenant Falcone had picked up a late-model Camry upon arriving at the airport. Yes, his flight had arrived on time. Yes, he had been alone. He was scheduled to return the car on Sunday. Was there a problem with the rental? It was their pleasure to be of service to America's Elite, by the way—how could they improve the experience?

Scarlett, meanwhile, was calling the town's highway patrol. No, they hadn't received any accident reports about a late-model Camry tonight—they hadn't received any accident reports at all. They were surprised it was such a slow night, to be honest. Was there anything else they could do to help?

Taking a cue from Scarlett, Machine tried the local hospital, but no one answering Falcon's description had been brought in that night. Even Scarlett breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that news.

Duke began making some calls of his own—first to the owner of his favorite local bar, Peggy O'Neill's. He'd known several of the bartenders since high school, and since the exposure of the team's existence had been back every time he'd visited home.

No, Susannah Heath informed him, Vince hadn't been in tonight. Yes, she'd have known, because she'd have heard him schmoozing all the way in the back. She'd been on all night, and she was going to give him an earful for not dropping in to say hello if he was home. Maybe he'd stopped in to Bridie's instead?

Bridie's was the other bar the Hauser-Falcone boys frequented, but the working bartender, who had played football with Duke in the High, told a similar story. No, Jesse hadn't seen Vince tonight either. Too bad, he'd have loved to stand him to a beer on the house for his service. Had Conrad called Peggy's? Susannah was on tonight.

Duke hung up the phone in disgust, after promising both his old friends he'd stop in the next time he was in town, and politely accepting their assurances that Vince was probably just holed up with some girl and they'd hear from him in the morning. "I don't want to upset my parents, but I don't know who else to call. If he's not there, I'm going to start actually worrying. I just don't want to scare them for no reason if he's in his old bedroom snoring." He picked up the phone once more.

Before Scarlett could offer to make the call, Machine reached out and took the receiver from Duke. "You dial your mom and dad. I have an idea. It might get your brother in trouble, though."

Duke's brow furrowed, but he did as she advised. "After this stunt, he deserves it."

" _Hello_?" a sleepy voice asked after a few rings, and Duke's heart ached to talk to his stepfather, but he kept silent, letting Machine do her thing.

"Hiiiii," Machine trilled loudly, making both Duke and Scarlett wince. "Like, is Vinnie there?"

Max Falcone's voice was thick with sleep. " _I'm sorry_?"

Machine giggled, her pitch high. She even twirled a lock of copper hair around her finger, getting into her act even though Duke's stepfather couldn't see her. "I'm looking for Vinnie Falcone. He said to call him here tonight and we'd go out. He gave me this number."

Max muttered something mildly unpleasant about Falcon, then said in a more polite tone, " _I'm afraid you're mistaken, ma'am. My younger son isn't home this weekend. Could you have meant my elder son? We were expecting him this evening, but he warned us he might be arriving late._ "

 _"_ Well how d'ya like that!" Machine said in a silly voice. "Vinnie never told me he had a brother!"

Max was starting to wake up. " _Who is this_?"

Duke and Scarlett exchanged worried glances, but Machine was on top of things.

"It's Vicky!" Machine chirped brightly. "Vicky from the bar!"

" _Who_?"

"Vicky with a _V_!" Machine pressed, then said, "Gosh, Mr. Falcone, I'm _so_ sorry if I woke you up. It'd be just like that Vinnie to tell me to call on a weekend he wasn't home! Next time I see him I'm gonna give him a piece of my mind! Ya have a good night, sir!" Before Max could say anything else, she hung up.

"Vicky with a _V_?" Scarlett asked dubiously, and Machine shrugged with a sheepish look.

Duke frowned. "He never made it home?"

"Guess not," Machine said sadly. "Sorry, Duke."

"You and Falcon didn't tell your parents he was coming instead of you?" Scarlett asked, having isolated that part of the conversation instead.

"Vince was supposed to call them," Duke groused. "What a surprise, he forgot."

"I'm going to give that kid a noogie when I see him next," Scarlett said. "And by that I mean I'm going to have Snake Eyes do it, and he'll wake up a week later with a bald patch on his head."

"I'll hold his arms so he can't get away," Duke growled, his patience for his brother at an end. "This is unbelievable. I'm going out there to look for him."

"Don't mean to be the pin to that balloon, Duke, but don't you have an appropriations meeting with the brass tomorrow?" Machine pointed out. "General Hawk had me nail down transpo for the two of you and get Flint to cover some of your tasks."

Duke muttered a curse.

"Angie is right," Scarlett said. "Hawk wouldn't have cancelled your leave if he didn't think this meeting was important. If you bail because you're chasing after your brother, he'll have kittens. He might not blame you, but he _will_ blame Falcon and the kid doesn't need any more disciplinary actions in his jacket." Her voice was gentler as she added something that was as hurtful as it was honest. "And _you've_ got to stop cleaning up after him. No matter how good your intentions are, if he's not cut out to be a Joe, it'll show itself eventually, and if that happens all he'll do is drag you down with him."

Duke frowned, but could not argue; she was right. Still... "He's my brother. I've got to risk it. The chances are one in a hundred that something's wrong, but if it turns out he's in trouble, I'll never forgive myself for not giving him a hand."

The two Joes and their admin fell silent for a moment, and then Scarlett set her jaw with a flinty glint in her eye. "So give him my hand."

Duke and Machine both said, "What?"

"I'll go," Scarlett clarified. "I'll go to Missouri and find out what Falcon's up to. I'm off the duty roster till Sunday, remember? I'll go track him down. Machine can get me out there—can't you, Angie?"

Machine's green eyes sparkled with excitement. "Rat-a-tat-tat. You betcha, Agent Scarlett."

Scarlett grinned. "And that is why we call you the Machine Gun."

"No," Duke said, and both women turned to look the question at him. He shook his head. "Don't bother, Machine. Scarlett, I'll get Ripcord to drop you—if you're really sure about this, I'm not wasting your time flying coach."

"Can you do that?" Scarlett asked, visibly surprised at the offer. "You and Hawk are about to go into a meeting to beg for more money for the unit, and here you are expending a resource to take one Joe on a routine check."

"You let me worry about that," Duke told her, then turned to Machine. "Rustle up Ripcord and make the transpo happen, Angie, I'll take care of the rest."

"You got it, Duke." Angie spun in her chair with the pride of being useful and began going through her contact files. One was labeled "Strings to Pull", which would have amused Duke had the circumstances not been so dire. While Machine was busy, Duke pulled Scarlett aside.

"Scarlett...I can't ask you to do this."

"You aren't asking, I'm offering," Scarlett assured him. "I can tell you're upset. Let me help." She darted a glance towards Machine, decided against an overt display of affection, and kissed her fingertip, tapping it against the scar on his cheek. "And for what it's worth, you're right. Something feels funny about the whole thing, but Hawk needs you here. Let me handle this. With any luck, I'll be back tomorrow afternoon with a ton of complaints about Falcon wasting my time. You keep this out of Hawk's crosshairs, and go get me a Night Boomer while you're at it."

Duke smiled in amusement. "Hawk told you about the Boomer, did he?"

Scarlett's eyes gleamed. "He may have dropped a hint or two. And since I'm giving up valuable time with my favorite soldier to go chase after one I like far less, I think I ought to be the first to get to fly it. With aforementioned favorite soldier as my backseat, of course. Maybe he could take me to dinner and a movie in it." She winked.

"Valuable time with your favorite soldier, hmm?" Duke murmured, stepping closer to her to speak softly. "Should I be jealous?"

"Only of your reflection in the mirror," Scarlett promised fondly, then said, "Are you honestly serious about having Ripcord go to the trouble of flying me to Missouri?"

"I couldn't be more serious," he assured her. "If you're willing to go to all this trouble because my brother is a moron, I'm not making you wait in an airport terminal all night."

"I'm not doing it for him. I'm doing it for you," Scarlett said quietly. "And don't think I'm not upset that this is cutting into our time together."

"Not half as upset as I am, and Falcon is going to be a very unwilling tackling dummy for Snake Eyes for the next month," Duke groused. "You can feel free to tell him that when you find him, and if he bitches at you, tell him it came straight from me." He meant this—he was in a low mood. It was bad enough he hadn't been able to go home and pick up his gift for Scarlett, but thanks to Falcon, he wasn't even going to get to sleep in her arms tonight. "If I didn't know better, I'd think the little brat did this on purpose to get back at me."

Duke was so disappointed in how all of his plans for the weekend had been shot so completely to hell that he didn't realize his misstep, but very little got past Scarlett. "For what?" she asked in sudden concern.

Alarm bells rang in Duke's head—he'd told Vince to keep the real reason for his errand under wraps, and here he was about to blow it out of anger. "I mean, at you," he said distractedly, trying to downplay it.

"For _what_?" she repeated pointedly. Duke had no answer for that one, but luckily for him, Scarlett's eyes darkened sadly with a thought that upset her far more. "Duke...no matter what I think of Falcon, I don't want to come between you and your brother."

He was glad she'd decided to overlook his verbal slip, but he hated seeing that look in her eyes all the same. He put his hands on her upper arms, risking the touch in front of Machine because it could be construed as friendly rather than intimate. "Scarlett. Who's your backseat in your Skystriker?"

"You are, Duke," she said, brow crinkling as she tried to follow this line of reasoning.

"Right. Who's your jump buddy for HALO?"

"You."

"Exactly. You're my partner," he told her firmly, the term a word they'd long since encoded to mean something much deeper, for times there were feelings that simply _had_ to be expressed in front of other Joes. He gave her upper arms a comforting squeeze. "I don't want any other partner. Falcon is just going to have to get used to it being you and me."

Scarlett's grateful smile was worth him expending the effort to talk in code—which ultimately proved to be pointless, since Machine wasn't fooled in the slightest and didn't even try to hide her grin.

* * *

"Who was that, dear?" Constance Falcone murmured sleepily, turning her head towards the interruption.

"One of Vincent's girlfriends," Max Falcone grumbled, settling himself back under the covers after hanging up the phone. "We ought to get that boy his own hotline."

"Takes after his father, I imagine," Constance teased, snuggling up to her husband.

Max snorted, curling an arm around her and brushing a lock of reddish hair off her forehead. "Aw, honey, you know I'm a one-woman man. It's not my fault Vince has decided to be a thousand-woman man." Arching a dark brow, he said, "And Conrad is apparently a _zero_ -woman man. I would have thought after the truth came out about the Joe team that women would be camped outside the house the way they were when the boys were in high school—goodness knows Vince is playing the G.I. Joe card to his advantage—but apparently Conrad has grown out of that. Boy's all work and no play."

"Max," Constance murmured warningly. "We talked about this."

"I'm just saying that as much as he loves the service, it's not going to love him back. It wouldn't kill him to—"

"We talked about this," Constance repeated patiently. "He's been through enough in the last few years, and you're not going to make it harder on him. We're not going to give him the grandchildren argument because that sort of thing is up to Conrad and whoever he chooses for a partner."

Max grunted. "I'm not worried about grandchildren. We're lucky Vincent hasn't already sired a bunch of them for us."

"But he will someday and you know it, so you're not going to lean on Conrad for that," Constance pointed out. "And we're not going to talk about the service because that's his choice too, and he's coming home to get away from it for a few days. He takes enough orders and speaks to enough old soldiers who want to tell him what his best course of action is. So tomorrow you're just going to be his stepfather, OK?"

Max chuckled and brushed his lips against her hair; this was a lecture he'd heard before. " _You're_ his mother. I would think you'd be concerned that he hasn't got a picture of a sweetheart in his footlocker."

"Maybe," Constance mused, sleep threatening to overtake her again. "Or maybe he's just holding out for somebody special."

"What gives you that idea?"

Constance could have told her husband exactly what had given her that idea, but it wasn't her secret to tell—at least not yet.

Normally, Conrad indulged his mother on his visits just as much as she babied him; he knew she felt helpless when he was deployed, and her method of combating that feeling was to cosset him as much as he'd allow when he was home. Given her son's strength and independence, that was not much at all, but she knew he was indulging her when he agreed to let her wash his clothes or help him tack up his horse before he rode. More recently, after the merciful fates had given him back to them and revealed the truth about the elite special forces team he commanded, she had even begun offering to help maintain his guns, just to show him that she was proud of him, that she didn't disapprove of his choice of career no matter how much she worried about him. He had protested weakly at first, but had acquiesced when he saw how important it was to her.

Until the last time he had visited. That had been quite some time ago, while he was recovering from the grievous injury he had received from the villainous Serpentor, something Constance did not allow herself to think on too hard after learning the specifics of it. She chose simply to remain grateful he had pulled through-even the doctors had told her it had been nothing short of a miracle, and she believed it.

However, while he had been home recuperating, she had fought to keep the atmosphere as comforting and steady as she had always tried to make it for him. There was no discussion of his injury, and very little talk of what was happening back at the G.I. Joe base. Every so often Duke would fret aloud about "The Pit", and wonder what was going on with a particular Joe or if Vince was behaving himself; he had made increasingly frequent calls to check in until someone named Edwin had given him a cutting little speech about stress levels and his recovery; Constance had overheard Duke's side of the conversation from the hall and had made sure she was in the kitchen to greet him as he stormed towards the back door, knowing exactly where he was headed.

"Off for a ride?" she had asked, as if she didn't see the thunderclap expression on his face. "Why don't you let me tack him up? I know you were approved for riding and light exercise, but I also know you were lifting weights this morning. I don't want you to overdo it."

"Thank you, Mama," Duke had said sincerely, "but if it's all right with you I'll do it. I haven't spent too much time with Patriot lately because I've been laid up. It's about time we had an afternoon ride, and tacking him up will give me a little more time with him. Thanks, though."

"Whatever you like, honey. Did you bring your Colt?" she had asked. "You could let me have a look at it if you did. If you won't let me tack up your horse, I can at least clean your gun." She smiled affectionately, ruffling her eldest son's hair.

But Duke's face had flamed with a blush, and he'd laughed almost nervously as he stammered, "N-no, Mama, that's all right. You know I take good care of my sidearms. Just did the Colt myself the other day. It doesn't need a cleaning. Thanks."

She had told herself not to smother him, but this had caused a line to appear on her brow. "Conrad, are you all right?"

He'd smiled, that handsome smile that was so like his father's, and had braced his big hands on her shoulders, just like Shane had always done. "Tell you what. If you really want to help, you can pack me a lunch. Telling off Lifeline is hungry work—for someone who hates violence, the man is the mouse that roared when someone goes against his medical advice. Deal?"

She'd smiled back, giving one of his hands a squeeze. "Thank you for indulging me, sweetheart. Give me fifteen minutes."

"You bet. I'm gonna go tack him up. Be back." He had already seemed calmer; his step had only been rushed out of eagerness; the time riding would do him good, medical advice or no.

Still, it had tickled at her brain that he had been very adamant about her not cleaning his gun. She had done it before, and he had never complained-he'd once joked she'd done a more thorough job than he was apt to do. Yet this time, he had stammered and blushed, his words tripping over themselves in his haste to put her off.

The temptation had been too great, and no reminders of what had befallen Pandora had helped get her mind off the inconsistency; when Conrad and Patriot had left a trail of dust in their wake, she had located the case in which he kept his Colt 1911. It was not one of the weapons he used in the field, but one he carried when he was in civilian clothes and sensed that a weapon might be needed; Constance was unhappy to note how often he wore it after the existence of the team had become public and his face had been plastered all over the national news. As such, the Colt did not conform to the standards demanded by the Joe team; it was a personal item—and upon opening its case, Constance had realized it was a _very_ personal item, and the reason he might not have wanted her to see it had become instantly apparent.

Constance had seen sweetheart grips before. Shane's father had had a set on one of his pistols, and Shane himself had put a photo of her beneath the grips of one of his guns despite her not-quite-sincere protests that it was embarrassing. As a boy, Conrad had been fascinated with the grips whenever he was allowed to look at them—Constance had made sure they spent time every so often talking about Shane, and going through his things had been a bittersweet reminder of the wonderful years she had shared with her first husband.

The standard-issue grips on Conrad's Colt had been replaced with ones made of clear Lucite, and beneath the one that had been immediately visible upon opening the case, a woman leaned against a wall, a riot of color against the gray surface; Constance had wondered if that flat gray wall had been somewhere in the "Pit" her son kept referring to.

There had been nothing salacious about the photograph. Although the woman in it was shapely, there was nothing vulgar about the way she was dressed-jeans and a button-down shirt-or the way she was posed; the camera had caught her from the hip up, upper body in profile, head turned over her shoulder towards the photographer. Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows, displaying forearms that were lean with muscle, a contrast to the sweetly feminine curves of breast and hip that the casual clothes couldn't disguise.

Despite the innocence of the image, Constance Falcone had known somehow that she had stumbled upon something incredibly private, and had blushed as though she'd found a pornographic magazine among her eldest son's things.

The woman in the photograph hadn't just been pretty—she was startlingly beautiful, her complexion creamy beneath the bright Irish fire of her hair. The wide eyes that had dominated this fair face were brilliantly blue, framed by long, thick lashes. She hadn't quite been smiling, but there was a fondness to her expression; she had gazed affectionately at the camera as though whatever was behind the lens was her favorite thing in the entire world. The blood-bright hair had been bound in a long tail that rippled over one shoulder, and around her neck was a chain identical to the one Conrad wore, strung with two stainless-steel tags undoubtedly stamped with a name, rank and blood type that Constance had not been able to read at the distance the photographer had been standing. She would have traded much to know even the code name the tags bore, let alone the legal one, but all there was to go on were two words that had been written on the photo, against the backdrop of that gray wall, in a half-feminine, Palmer-method script.

 _Love, Red._

Constance had been able to tell that it was not a professional photograph, despite its simplistic loveliness; Conrad had likely taken it himself, and the expression on the woman's face gave credence to that theory. Moreover, the woman had worn civilian clothing in the photo, but she was not a civilian—the tags told a different story, even if it was one Constance hadn't been able to read.

Closing the case and locking it once more, Constance Falcone had had to smile at the thing her eldest son held so dear he kept it hidden so as not to have to share it with anyone. It wasn't a hot book or a picture of a lingerie model; it was an innocent, pretty photo of a heartbreakingly lovely woman, who wore a pair of dog tags in case she fell in battle, who looked at the camera as though she adored the man behind the viewfinder, who had given this image to Conrad to keep with her blessing written in the corner— _Love, Red._

Her concern had not been that Conrad hadn't told her about this woman-he was a serious-minded man, and she did not think he had deemed it unimportant and not worth sharing; she knew her son well enough to know that it was likely the opposite. It was with a delight barely tempered by curiosity that she had figured that Conrad had carefully guarded what this woman meant to him because that was what one did with a treasure.

And now, settling down to sleep in her husband's arms, she continued to keep the secret—but she still wasn't enjoying having to pretend she hadn't found the bloody thing until Conrad was ready to tell her more, because she'd have given a small body part to have even a _name_ to attach to that bright tail of hair, that gorgeous face.

Love, Red, indeed!

* * *

"Are you _sure_?" Ripcord asked for the fourth time, staring over Breaker's shoulder at the blinking light signifying the homing beacon, which the communications expert had confirmed still had not moved since he'd become aware of its veering off-course. "You know I'll back your play, Duke, but that looks like it's in the middle of the goddamned nowhere."

"Which is why you've got to get Scarlett there as quickly as possible," Duke said firmly. "Like Breaker said, we might all be worrying for nothing, but let's err on the side of caution."

"Roger that, Top." Despite his misgivings, Ripcord was content simply having voiced them; he was rather easygoing, and this assignment, weird as it sounded, was a walk in the park for him. "I'll fuel up a bird and sign it out."

"Machine's already on that," Duke said, surprising the pilot, whose brow furrowed at the thought that Duke had brought the admin in on something that seemed so trifling. "Just get yourself suited up and meet us on the tarmac. Say thirty minutes."

Breaker gave Duke a hangdog look, scratching at his beard; even his perpetual gum-chewing seemed subdued. "Seriously, Top, it was just a joke. We never wanted anything bad to happen. I swear on my life."

Duke shook his head and waved a hand. "Water under the bridge. Scarlett was right-if something _is_ wrong, we never would have known about it if you guys hadn't pulled this stunt. If Falcon needs our help, we might still be able to get to him in time, and it'll be thanks to you, Breaker. And if that's the case, I'll owe you one."

As they walked out of the communications center with the coordinates Breaker had given them, Ripcord took the opportunity to try and get a little more information out of his field commander. "How serious is this, Duke?" he asked. "You're making it sound like it's no big deal, but...it's starting to sound like a big deal."

"With any luck at all, it won't be, Ripcord." Duke stopped for a moment, his blue eyes darkening with something Ripcord couldn't place until the master sergeant added quietly, "Just fly my partner safe."

The pilot nodded, aware as all the Joes were of the subtext beneath this order, and held up a fist for Duke to bump his knuckles against.

"You got it, Duke. Sure you don't want me to stick around and back her up?"

"If I had my way, you would, but you're on the roster for tomorrow and we're pushing it as it is. Don't worry." The master sergeant smiled. "I've got a plan to get her back here." The plan involved picking her up personally in her coveted Night Boomer and taking full advantage of the evening off Hawk had given them both, but he didn't tell Ripcord that. Maybe he'd be able to give her her present after all.

* * *

The Cobra operative Yarara was furious and, save for the first time Conrad "Duke" Hauser had slipped through her fingers, could not recall ever having been more so.

Before tripping flirtatiously around Falcon's rented Camry to slide into the passenger seat, she had grabbed a worn rucksack from the driver's seat of her own "disabled" vehicle. In reality, the old Bonneville she had hotwired and stolen had simply been stage dressing once it had fulfilled its purpose of getting her into position; there was nothing wrong with it apart from cosmetic damage. Still, once the G.I. Joe blowhard had pulled over and fallen for her trap, she had had no more use for the old junker, even if the driver of the rented Camry hadn't been who she had been expecting—nay, _hoping_ —for.

And then there was the matter of _that_. Four crucial vectors had had to align before she could even consider undertaking this mission—leave for Conrad Hauser, a position of power for her, the assignation of one or more operatives to her command, and the pinpointing of a very specific tracking signal—and she had come all this way only to find out that she had been played false by one of the vital components of her plan.

She had noticed it right away, the broad gem flashing in the dim moonlight as Vincent Falcone's hand had rested on the steering wheel—the ring. _Duke's_ ring. She wasn't sure how the little whelp had gotten a hold of it, but that no longer mattered; she was nothing if not adaptable, and she had quickly revised her plan. Duke would come to her eventually-because she would _make_ him come to her. She had had his baby brother in her clutches, and he would drive her to his home, where she would add two more hostages to her collection. And Duke would come running to save his family—there would be no question of that.

Yarara spat derisively at the saccharine sweetness of such an idea. Family was an illusion—the only thing one could count on in this world was themselves, and she knew that better than anyone. Duke was about to find out the hard way that trusting his family to do right by him was a mistake—his little brat of a brother clearly didn't care about what was best for him.

Her first instinct upon coming to was to slit the little bastard's throat. It would have been easy for her; Falcon lay slumped against the steering wheel, thick lashes—so like his brother's—glued to his cheek by a slow rivulet of blood coursing from his abraded brow. It would have been the work of a second to tip his head back and open his jugular to spray the dashboard.

But she stayed her anger, realizing that the momentary satisfaction of killing him would leave her as empty-handed as she had arrived. She left the traitorous ring on his finger for now-her only use for it anymore was sentimental, the trophy it had become in her mind, and she was confident she would strip him of it in due time. But first things first.

He had hooked the rental car keys onto his own keyring-a habit his father had instilled in him so as not to lose them, although Yarara could not have known that. Now she left the Camry's keys in the ignition, unclipping what she assumed was the keys to his parents' house—they were dull with age and attached to a keychain that bore the name of the local high school sports team. He had even mentioned it to her in his flippantly impertinent manner—"Go, Rough Riders."

The keys weren't useful to her in the traditional sense; she still didn't know the way to the Falcone house, and her ride had turned out to be...unreliable. But when the infuriating G.I. Joe twerp awoke-and she knew he would; he was breathing, and she imagined he was only still unconscious due to that thick head of his-and found his house keys gone, he would assume she _did_ know and had already struck out for the old homestead. He would race off to save the day, and she would follow, radioing her team on the way; once they were all together, she and her compatriots would corner them. After that, she had only to inform Duke that he was...needed at home.

The thought brought a smile to her lovely face, the blood matting her dark, tangled hair and drying on her skin enhancing its cruelty.

The rucksack contained her BDUs; she stood beside the Bonneville to strip out of the costume she'd affected to look like a young hitchhiker, mocking the fallen Falcon as she changed into the blue neoprene garment he would have recognized immediately.

"What's the matter, Falcon?" she murmured as she pulled her peasant blouse over her head and unclipped the cheap bra she wore, intending to change it for the more utilitarian undergarments that would afford her extra protection beneath her BDUs. "Isn't this what you wanted from me?"

No answer from the unconscious G.I. Joe.

"You're speechless," she chuckled darkly once she had finished dressing and strapped her knife to her thigh, checking her holsters-shoulder, ankle. "That's quite the compliment. Don't worry, I don't mind..."

She spared him one last cruel glance before melting into the trees to keep her predatory vigil over him.

"...I'm saving my energy for your brother."

* * *

Scarlett didn't bother with things like makeup on base, not even when she was coming to see Duke; that was a luxury she saved only for the rare, special occasions he took her out. This was not one of those nights—she was no longer in class As and a lacy bra but her BDUs, her derringer strapped to her glove, her crossbow slung over her back, breastplate buckled, shoulder armored. Her hair was bound neatly in a long tail, and she had not bothered with cosmetics. Which was a good thing, because had she been wearing any lipstick, it would have been smeared hopelessly and Duke would have been wearing a good amount of it himself at this point. He closed his eyes and turned his head to seek her lips when she pulled away, something that always made her laugh until he caught up and silenced her with the press of his mouth to hers; now he slanted his mouth over hers with a kiss so hard it was nearly a punishment.

"Duke, I'll be back in twelve hours," she whispered amusedly through swollen lips. "Less. Not that I'm complaining about the send-off. We'll be apart less than a day."

"I don't like to be apart." The fact that this was almost a growl did not lessen how childish and pouty he knew it sounded. He had to quell a sudden, fierce urge to seize her hand in his and pull her along with him, back to his quarters, his office, a damn closet if that was what it took to be alone with her. The desire that had been interrupted and shelved before was now twisting frustratingly through him like a burning wire; he marveled as always at the depth of his passion where she was concerned. He had been in love before Scarlett, but it had never felt like this—never so fierce or complete as this, and he remained willingly spellbound by it.

He allowed himself a brief fantasy of spiriting her away, somewhere, anywhere they could indulge in the interrupted dalliances of earlier. It would be quick and good; there was something deliciously forbidden and dirty about their rare hurried trysts, when they both acknowledged wanting each other too much to wait any longer, but he closed his eyes and forced himself to focus. She was offering a very generous favor by checking up on his selfish, thoughtless brother, and given her opinion of Falcon this was no small thing. To delay her further on her unwelcome errand would make him just as selfish, no matter how pleasurable the delay might be. Instead he would go to the damned appropriations meeting, the irritating but necessary task made easier by the knowledge that she would be back in his arms that evening, off the duty roster and all his. Much better to wait until there was plenty of opportunity to be gentle, to take his time and make _her_ whimper and say please, _please Conrad_.

"Earth to Duke," Scarlett laughed from somewhere beyond his closed eyes. "You with me?"

"Till the end of the line," he murmured, cupping her face in his hand and stroking his thumb over her cheekbone. Scarlett laughed and leaned into the caress.

"Oh, Top, I love it when you talk like a comic book."

Lacing her fingers through his to hold his hand—a simple, sweet act that he treasured when it happened because she so seldom displayed her affection so publicly—she stood before the aircraft and looked towards the horizon. Duke was suddenly, forcefully reminded of the moment he'd become certain that he loved her—seeing her rise from the cockpit of her Skystriker and pull her helmet off, shaking that incredible hair out and favoring him with that dazzling smile—and a horrible feeling of premonition came over him; the thought that he might not hold her again. He shook it away with a visible effort, and Scarlett's expression darkened with concern as soon as she noticed his discomfort.

"Don't worry," she promised lovingly. "I'll find him and bring him home. I promise."

For a moment, Duke almost blurted out the entire story—his spoiled plans for the weekend, the gift he'd wanted to bring back for her, the photograph of the two of them dancing that he had wanted his mother to see, so she would know by the look on his face how happy Scarlett made him. His chest hurt with the depth of feeling, his nerve endings fizzing in frustration at his inability to express himself. Instead he brought her against him almost roughly, brashly burying his face in her hair.

"Bring yourself home," he ordered, forcing the frost of command into his tone so it wouldn't sound as much like begging as it felt. He whispered the rest against her ear, a swift and private declaration that he rarely chanced outside of his quarters or a weekend pass. "I love you."

"C'mere, soldier." Scarlett smiled, clasped his face between her hands and rose on her toes to kiss him.

Ripcord had taken the sudden responsibility Duke had placed on his shoulders very seriously, but he was five minutes late to meet them on the tarmac. This was not accidental; he had actually showed up a few minutes early and caught a glimpse of the redhead in their field commander's arms, not quite shadowed by the aircraft. Without premeditation, Ripcord had turned on his heel and found an elsewhere to be, checking his gear for a completely unnecessary third time. Duke maintained that this was a simple errand and danger seemed to be the furthest thing from anyone's mind, but the Joe pilot had been on enough of these runs to know how much a goodbye kiss was worth.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

" **Till the end of the line"** is one of my favorite Captain America references, so I borrowed it for Duke and Scarlett here, same as I did in chapter one.

 **Sweetheart grips** are purportedly a trend that began in the early 1900s, specifically World War I if I am not mistaken, but there are a few companies that offer custom grips for either sentimental or tactical purposes, and I like the idea.

 **I'll take it:** I've based Duke's parents on the way they were portrayed in _G.I. Joe Renegades_ , which I loved. It was also awesome that Michael Bell and B.J. Ward provided the voices for Duke's parents in that series and would have loved to see more of that.

 **Nintendo Hard:** Upon being interrupted by Duke and Scarlett in the rec room, Angela Machine is playing one of my favorites— _Castlevania_ for the NES which was released in 1984, and is one of the games that defines the expression "Nintendo Hard". People will say that when referring to a game that is ridiculously difficult, and they don't call it "Castlevania Frustration Syndrome" for nothing.

Please forgive me if I've missed any references, I am _extremely_ tired this afternoon. If anyone's still reading, you have my thanks.


End file.
